The Bastard Queen!

It’s the end of the world as we know it, but these survivors don’t feel fine. As The Bastard Queen! opens, we’re plunged straight into the aftermath of a non-specific apocalypse. Surrounded by destruction, four people continue to eke out a living, eating old canned goods and scavenging for useful items.

Then, in the good old tradition of impostor drama, a stranger enters their midst. Not just any stranger, but a pregnant stranger, whose unborn child the gang of survivors inexplicably decide is the only hope for humanity’s future. With hesitation and unease, she’s cautiously welcomed into the group, but the question is for how long.

The vagueness of the catastrophe that has brought the characters here is intriguing at first, but without any backstory it’s hard to invest anything in their plight. The production also overdoes the use of music and physical sequences, leaving little time to develop the characters.

What Naughty Corner Productions do capture well, though, is the banality of disaster. Life goes on, even when all other life has disappeared. The survivors battle boredom and chat shit, bickering over grammar or getting nostalgic about old TV shows. 

But it never really seems to be going anywhere. This is aimless, dead-end drama. Its only discernible point is that extreme conditions hold up the mirror to human nature, bringing out both the best and the worst. It doesn’t require the staging of the apocalypse to realise that humans are capable of great cruelty and great kindness.