Nuclear Family by Gilles Messier	MaxQ Productions - Winnipeg, MB	V.20 - The Studio at Le Théâtre Cercle Molière
	Justin and Bea are just your average 1960s Canadian couple. They have two kids, a house in the suburbs and a fully-stocked fallout shelter in the basement. But will their detailed survival plans prepare them for challenges more daunting than the atomic bomb - personal secrets, troublesome neighbours and teenage angst? A Cold War dark comedy from the creator of the Harry S. Rintoul Award-nominated Murmurs of Earth and Countdown to Babylon. Cast: Alyx Buhler, Markus Buhler, Debbie Dann, Sadie Armstrong, Gilles Messier, Marek Winfield Director: Gilles Messier & Kylee Kolesar	Show Info: 60 minutes Genre: Play-Dramedy Audience: Parental Guidance	Wed July 17 9:15 PM Fri July 19 4:00 PM Sat July 20 2:00 PM Sun July 21 8:30 PM Tue July 23 4:00 PM Thu July 25 7:00 PM Fri July 26 4:00 PM Sun July 28 5:15 PM

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

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