Writer: Sophie Smyth
Director: Casey Gould
As you step into the room, it takes a second for the background track to register—until you catch yourself chuckling at the sheer, dark brilliance of the playlist choice. Entering to Queen’s Under Pressure perfectly anchors the show in a hilarious yet slightly uneasy footing. ‘Captain’ Sophie Smyth—self-declared commander armed with a laptop and a Logitech F710 controller—welcomes us as “mission specialists” for a multimedia descent into the 2023 Titan submersible tragedy.
At first, the show thrives on gallows humour, memes, and absurd trivia—like a billionaire’s stepson tweeting Blink-182 during the search. As Smyth introduces the ultra-wealthy passengers as her “newest favourite characters,” a brief question of taste arises. But as the information grows increasingly nuanced, the performance subtly shifts into something far more profound.
Smyth unleashes a rapid-fire barrage of haunting questions—What was the last thing you wished for? Were they screaming? What would your last song be?—creating an intoxicating sense of narrative spiral. Through this hyperfixation, the initial mockery dissolves into deep empathy. Smyth humanises the passengers, confronting her own guilt in doing so, and ultimately sees her own arrogance, ambition, and mortality reflected back at her through Stockton Rush.
The show shifts from a dark comedy into something surprisingly personal and quiet. Pointing out the old idiom that “we are all passengers on the Titanic,” Smyth argues that we are actually all passengers on the Titan: trapped in our own spiralling minds, driven by ego, and desperate to feel fulfilled before time runs out.
The Subplot is an extraordinary piece of theatre. It takes a viral tragedy and turns it inside out, delivering a funny, uncomfortable, and deeply human examination of neurodivergence, empathy, and existential dread.
Runs until 31 August 2026 | Image: Contributed
