World Premiere 'End of the World!' is an Intensely Personal Flight of Fancy

REVIEW: At SCR, Keiko Green’s delightful dramedy interlocks one man’s terminal illness with global issues.

Cast of SCR’s production: From left: Sharon Omi, Alysia Reiner, Anna LaMadrid, Robert de la Fuente, River Gallo, Rafael Goldstein. Photo courtesy of South Coast Repertory/Robert Huskey

Not many plays can be said to be both intensely personal and universal, but count Keiko Green’s 2024 dramedy “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World!” among these.

Green’s script was featured in last spring’s Pacific Playwrights Festival. Along with “The Staircase,” it’s one of two anchor productions of this year’s PPF, and is now getting its world premiere.

The play was commissioned by ACT in Seattle, and the resulting production at SCR, directed by Zi Alikhan, is at once delightful, moving and thought-provoking.

The play begins somewhere in the swirling cosmos, where a mystical figure who serves as our MC (River Gallo) informs us that we’re at “the start of the universe” – and then, “I’m here to tell you about how the world died.”

In the play’s fanciful opening, the MC (River Gallo) appears out of the swirling cosmos, saying “we’re at the start of the universe” – but also that “now the world has died.” Photo courtesy of South Coast Repertory/Robert Huskey

The play’s focus is the nuclear family of: Greg (Joel de la Fuente), wife Viv (Alysia Reiner), and their young adult child Mikey, who everyone calls “M” (Gallo).

Greg and Viv are your typical, loving, free-spirited couple enjoying the freedoms of middle age. The couple are so into each other, they’re still given to playful, spontaneous lovemaking on the kitchen table.

Only Greg hasn’t been feeling well. Dr. Thomas (Sharon Omi) coldly and clinically lays out the grim diagnosis that he’s in end-stage pancreatic cancer. His days are numbered.

The bleak news sends Greg and Viv spiraling in different directions. Greg spends restless nights soaking up anything on TV connected with climate change.

Global warming, he reasons, will eventually lead to the planet’s extinction just as his medical condition will lead to the end of his own life.

Viv, meanwhile, only feels the need to nurture Greg and lavish him with care and affection. But he’s now off on his own path.

“…End of the World!” deftly shows us the effects of those with terminal illness upon those in his or her orbit, just as we see the catastrophic effects of climate change on planet Earth.

The play documents how Greg and Viv interreact, Greg at ease exploring the details of global warming, Viv clearly affected by the way he has reacted to the knowledge that he won’t be around for much longer.

Reiner’s Viv wants do-gooders to leave the family alone, and wants Greg to accept love, sympathy and pampering from his family. She’s none too successful at either.

And, as Green shows us, every person is on his or her own trajectory in life.

“World!” essentially revolves around Greg, increasingly absorbed by the Earth’s destruction through global warming; Viv, desperate to wring every last drop of time with her husband; and M, groping their way along dealing with the implications of Greg’s inevitable death and trying to make sense of it all.

The nuclear family at the story’s heart: Mom Viv (Alysia Reiner), child M (River Gallo), dad Greg (Joel de la Fuente). Photo courtesy of South Coast Repertory/Robert Huskey

After the opening scenes, “World!” begins to expand outward and introduce new characters – some real, some in Greg’s imagination. Among the latter are climate activist Greta Thunberg, who enlightens Greg when noting that “only one person on their own is insignificant.”

While over for dinner with the family, M’s new boyfriend Will (Rafael Goldstein) delivers a rant on the futility of recycling, noting that corporate greed and wealth have reined in on any attempts at curbing pollution. He concludes that “the world will still exist without people” – but M concludes that “maybe our relationship to planet Earth was just a really toxic relationship.”

Anna LaMadrid’s principal role is as Viv’s younger sister Lila; Sharon Omi’s as Janet, a friend from Viv’s cancer encounter group; and Goldstein’s as Will, but all three deliver yeoman work in the script’s countless supporting roles, many with just a few moments of stage time.

Green’s script is the latest in a line of plays about individuals grappling with terminal illness, but it’s likely the first to conflate the person’s story with the larger issues of climate change that have stared mankind in the face for decades now, showing us increasing peril with each passing year.

Among the evening’s more surreal moments: The Bramble Cay melomys, the first mammal to go extinct due to climate change, appears to Greg, along with the now-extinct Golden Toad.

Greg (Joel de la Fuente) encounters climate activist Greta Thunberg (Anna LaMadrid). Photo by Robert Huskey, courtesy of South Coast Repertory

The scene is as memorable for Lux Haac’s incredible costume designs as for its informational content, as the Toad asks Greg (and all mankind), “How much more do you have to lose before you care?”

Green has constructed an elegantly slender universal framework onto which to hang her concepts and ideas. The laughs generated within us by some of her characters’ dialogue help ameliorate the genuine emotional pain felt by those characters.

Reiner’s Viv is frustrated at the way things play out, hoarse with grief over the prospect of losing Greg, pleading, “I just want him to be happy with us – but he can’t.”

Gallo’s M, meanwhile, is learning that when a person has a terminal illness, “it never stops being an announcement,” and they're clearly pained by “the pity, worry, sadness, shame” of those around Greg.

As the often bewildered Greg, de la Fuentes’ most poignant scenes arrive during Greg’s hospital bed utterances late in the story, as he tells Viv and M he wished he had more time, that he didn’t want to go, and exhorts them to remember him.

Director Alikhan succeeds in pulling together the script’s fanciful scenes and moments with those of more dire consequence, as well as the work of the production and design team members, which is all of a piece.

Adam Rigg’s scenic design, Nicholas Hussong’s projections, Haac’s costumes, Barbara Samuels’ lighting and the sound design of Noel Nichols and Uptown Works are effortlessly meshed.

Green eloquently sums up her themes, and those of the play, when a character says “And so he died, and so did the Earth.” Yes, it’s self-centered to think so, but yes, the entire Earth really does die with the death of each individual.

All of this makes “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World!” at once comedically irreverent, heart-wrenching and life-affirming.