Nuclear Family

MaxQ Productions—The Studio at Le Théâtre Cercle Molière

MaxQ returns to Winnipeg Fringe with a refreshing departure from their traditionally dense biographical works. The scene is set by eerily wholesome PSA-style civil-defense advice that the overall narrative fails to live up to. The convoluted plot tends to drag, weighed down by competing themes of theory vs. practical realism, preparedness as a trauma response, and family values at the end of the world. The aesthetically pleasing alt-history period piece seems to lose its own thread as it struggles to tell the audience every story that an apocalyptic nuclear threat might possibly generate while drawing no specific conclusions.

Ashley Frantik