At first sight, After the End looks uncannily topical. How on earth did playwright Dennis Kelly predict that just before he opened at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, the nuclear holocaust we have dreaded for three quarters of a century would suddenly feel very close indeed?

The advance publicity promised “a chilling post-nuclear play” and for the first half hour I thought that was what we were going to get.  But it’s not that at all.  It’s not even a play about how two people survive Armageddon together.  Nuclear war is just a dramatic device, like the snowstorm in The Mousetrap, to enable the writer to trap people together in a confined space.

About half an hour into After the End, doubt is raised about whether the nuclear holocaust has really taken place at all, or whether Mark invented it in order to keep Louise in his sealed nuclear bunker with him.

The play is really about the horrible things a nerdy and evil man might do to a woman if he could get her alone.  It reminded me of a tremendous 1965 film, The Collector, in which a nerdy clerk captures and imprisons an attractive woman whom he has long admired from afar.  

Once you have understood what it is, After the End is a rather good play. The first half hour or so is the best part, with Mark’s miseries and insecurities on full display as he reveals how much he hates a man in whom Louise has shown an interest, and he tries to force her to play his childhood game Dungeons and Dragons with him, threatening to deprive her of food if she refuses.  The scene where, with hunger gnawing at her insides, she finally plays the wretched game, is as delightful a piece of darkly funny writing as you’ll find anywhere.