Review: Martin Dockery's THE BUNKER at the Ottawa Fringe Festival

Have you ever wanted to make a difference, but found that life gets in the way? And even if you had something important to say, is there an audience willing to hear it? With apathy slowly killing the nation, sometimes, it feels like you are stuck in a bunker at the end of the world. The Bunker knows how you feel.

In this play within a play, we meet two brothers; one (Andrew Broaddus) is an actor and the other (Martin Dockery) is a playwright. Together, they are supposed to be putting on a performance of play about America. The problem? Despite his best intentions, the playwright never actually got around to writing it.

We delve into some of the reasons the play didn’t get written and learn more about the relationship between the siblings. Like any family, they bicker, they squabble, they disagree. They say hurtful things, then they apologize and express remorse, but then they repeat the cycle. How can one overcome decades of pent up resentment? Like America herself, one event can bring about a shift that threatens to topple the delicate balance that had people coexisting in relative harmony. Sure, the feelings may have always been there, but they used to be hidden under the surface – in the bunker, so to speak. Now, they have been exposed and once exposed, they are not so easily reburied.

Playwright (for real) Martin Dockery uses The Bunker to explore themes of hopelessness, democracy, family, forgiveness, resentment, jealousy, and the American dream. The show is fast paced and witty, with moments of truth that will nearly make you reel. The lesson? Now that we are out of the bunker, we can try to rise above jealously, resentment, and fear to realize that we are a family, however dysfunctional. Even if we don’t always agree, we can still get along, even if we are like rival siblings.