Gimme Shelter

Delectable Shelter isn't your typical post-apocalyptic piece of work. You won't find any cyber-punk aesthetics draped across the theatre. There are no abandoned cities or devastated towns looming on the horizon. As the title suggests, its characters stay safely sheltered away from the apocalypse. Well, relatively safely, anyway. Apparently, a choir of '80s pop enthusiasts stalk the halls, for some reason.

“The choir is very much integrated into the story,” writer/director Benedict Hardie teases. “It's slowly revealed, over the course of the play, who they actually are. It initially appears that they're just a Brechtian interlude sort of thing – you know, a song put in between scenes for a song's sake – but, as you get deeper into the story, you actually start to realise that's not the case. They actually have their own place in the story.”

It's a bit of a weird take on the end of the world. Which, frankly, is a relief. The apocalypse has become a surprisingly popular topic in fiction over the past handful of years. In 2013's cinema alone, we've had two major comedy films tackling the premise (This Is The End and The World's End) arrive within months of each other. However, Hardie is confident he's got a different spin. Largely because he arrived at the topic by complete accident.

“Yeah, it's turned out that it's quite a theme. I read an article written back in 2011 that actually listed five or six plays that were on about the apocalypse even back then,” the writer says. “It's definitely a trope. Personally, I wanted to write a play which was about the secret fears and irrational desires and prejudices that might be inside of us that we never have to face. In order to do that, I had to kill everyone alive except for five people.

“And, suddenly, the secrets and desires of those five people are very important. If you're the last five human beings alive, what you think and do not say takes on much more credence,” he says. “So, then, I found myself going down the sci-fi road with a certain amount of purpose. It was sort of an accidental sci-fi. What I wanted to write was a black comedy about prejudices and fears.”

If it sounds too highfalutin or eccentric, it isn't. Hardie and his company The Hayloft Project have road-tested the show extensively. By the end of its lifecycle, Delectable Shelter will have toured to Mildura, Portland, Warragul, Hobart, Newcastle, Healesville, Sale, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Byron Bay, Sydney, Knox, Northcote, Moonee Ponds and Brisbane. Hardie sounds almost relieved when discussing the work's reception.

“It's been really good. We've been getting return curtain calls at the end of each show. It's going really well,” he smiles. “I think it's quite an exciting show to tour. I've done a lot of touring work as an actor and I think Australia sometimes talks down to its theatre audiences. We take a lot of safe bets. And this show is most definitely not any kind of safe bet.”