The temperature is climbing inexorably towards the unlivable, as rising sea levels chomp great chunks out of our coastline and a seemingly unstoppable tide of fascism sweeps across the globe. But enough about real-world headlines, let’s chat about How to Eat Rabbit, the dystopian survivalist dramedy from Benched and Pillow Talk playwright, dramaturg and disability activist Jamila Main.
Set in a cursed timeline not entirely dissimilar from our own, How to Eat Rabbit, staged at La Mama Courthouse in Melbourne as part of the Hope Punk Climate Festival, also stars Main as Cam. She’s the less enthusiastic resident of an underground burrow that’s run with military precision by her hunter-fatigue-sporting buddy Alex (Nory Gretz).
How to Eat Rabbit review – quick links
Burrowing to safety
Alex is a dynamo who has commandeered this cave system and turned it into a bunker from which the pair plan to survive the possibly imminent end of the world, though it’s left tantalisingly vague just how bad things are up there. There’s a tiny possibility that Alex just loves the drama, even though the world is clearly on a spiralling downward trajectory.
Alex has drummed it into Cam that the pair must be ready to fight for their lives, if needs be, insisting on ever-expanding activity cycles including fitness and fighting training, with even well-earned rest measured out in exacting blocks.
Cam just wants a calm, quiet life, making the most of the world’s fast-dwindling supply of coffee and chocolate. Unlike Alex, who believes in strength without numbers, Cam reckons they could stand to add a few more souls to their buried hole. She’s also secretly struggling with abdominal pain that’s likely more serious than period cramps, popping pain relief pills like they’re going out of fashion – and they are, with hospitals packed to the gills and charging for the privilege these days.
Alex is also worried about their canned food diet, plundered from presumably shuttered supermarkets on their increasingly regular supply runs. With their trusty knife and shadow-boxing fists raised, they relish being the gatherer, but also want to flex their hunting skills, trying to convince Cam that they must catch and kill rabbits for greater sustenance. A plan the devout vegetarian will not countenance.
You’re projecting
Bunker dramas where very different characters are cloistered together in a bleak place have a habit of turning grim, like the abusively co-dependent relationships of Samuel Beckett’s tragicomic Endgame, or the much more insidious entrapment of Dennis Kelly’s After the End. Main’s take, directed by Lilah Benetti, is a little different.
Sure, Alex can be stubborn and certainly crosses the line in their misguided attempts to micromanage Cam’s macro diet, but Gretz brings a great deal of care to the role. You get that they genuinely adore Cam, and that they truly believe it’s necessary to save the pair at any cost. In an impressively nuanced turn, Gretz brings both an assured affability to their authoritarian tendencies and a resigned practicality to their determination.
While Cam may appear the more laid-back of the pair, they’re wrangling their pain, both internal and existential, anxious at the idea of spending the rest of their days in this cold and rocky place no amount of pillar-box red-painted sunsets can lighten, and with a limited number of pills to ease their cares.
Main’s Cam is an endearingly half-arsed presence – honestly, who’d have the energy, emotionally or physically, for the apocalypse? – but despite being How to Eat Rabbit’s author, the playwright had a less sure grip on the text on opening night, stumbling occasionally.
This was unfortunately underlined by the otherwise commendable accessibility decision, by majority disabled person-run production company Pillow Fight Theatre, to surtitle their lines, projected on La Mama’s black back wall.
Sure, there appeared to be projection synchronicity issues on the night, but it also highlighted Main missing or messing up chunks of dialogue, then stealing less-than-subtle glances at the surtitles to catch her place.
Gretz, to their great credit, took these minor wobbles in their stride, managing to steer the show, and Main, back on track with deftly improvised saves.
Selfies and food for thought
Each of How to Eat Rabbit’s compact chapters is announced with an ominously humming thrum by Cynthia Spleen’s sparse but evocative score that brings the necessary dread of what may lie ahead.
Lara Chamas’ austere set design aids the focus on performance by stripping the burrow back to basics. Rocky outcrops and packing crates double as furniture, with fairy lights strung up just for show – generator power is closely guarded. Likewise, Chamas’ costume design tells us plenty about these characters, with Alex favouring leather shorts, chunky boots and camouflage jacket while Cam wears comfy joggies.
Chamas also handles props, with a particularly fun subplot involving an old-school camera. While they know they won’t be able to get any prints developed, Alex nevertheless wants to capture the moment, as in social media-obsessed days gone by, snapping selfies and things they’re about to eat.
All the while, Cam sneaks peeks at their intermittently connected smartphone to advertise for burrow mates and doomscroll for information about her invisible illness travails, setting up conflict with the electricity-and-isolation-conscious Alex.
If How to Eat Rabbit feels a little scrappy and at times a touch repetitive, lengthening the feel of what should be a fairly tight 80 minutes, it works reasonably well as a two-hander examining differing approaches to traumatic times. A late-in-the-game fourth wall break emphasises that the savvy Main has something interesting to say about who gets to not only survive, but also thrive.
