Writer and Director: Amine Salmi
The problem with Groundhog Day-styled plays is that they offer the characters little chance of escape. The same can be said for the audience watching such dramas, and the long, leisurely Kill the Dinosaur by Amine Salmi, with a 90-minute first half, gives its viewers nowhere to run. With some extensive editing, an hour-long play could be salvaged.
Michael wakes up every morning to the sound of his neighbours playing Walk The Dinosaur, the 1980s hit by Was (Not Was). As he dresses for a job interview, he listens to generic self-help podcasts through his EarPods. At the bus stop, an old man rails against “the TikTok”, suffers a heart attack and dies.
The job interview is a disaster, too. Michael has carried out no research into the online shopping business he’s keen to join. And neither has he thought about how the impact of the Algerian blockade of French ports will affect the company. Kill the Dinosaurs is set in the distant future, but life seems pretty similar to today.
In a neat twist, Michael discovers that he’s not the only one caught in a daily loop (a metaphor for our own repetitive and endless string of days). His neighbour Sue is also waking up to identical mornings. However, she’s more willing to experiment with the situation. Believing that she is now somehow immortal, she wants to get drunk every night, try heroin, even murder someone. Life will be the same the next day, and there’ll be no hangovers, comedowns or corpses getting in the way. Michael is not so enthusiastic.
Sean O’Grady captures the weariness of Michael, but is not so convincing when he loses his temper. With his lack of resolve and his love of Nabokov’s Lolita, he’s not an easy character to sympathise with. More engaging is Greta Demertzi as Sue, the breezy neighbour who uses the opportunity to wreak revenge. Claudio Esposito (who played alongside Demertzi in Salmi’s equally overlong Dishes in the Fridge at 2023’s Camden Fringe) is underused as the smarmy interviewer. Zobia Haq is the very annoying spirit Michael encounters in the police station.
The cast and the crew come on stage every few minutes to shift the furniture, protracting the play’s running time even further. The stage is big enough for the set to remain in place for the entirety. However, the cast’s frequent lifting of tables and rolling up of futons mirrors the repetitions that Michael must endure. And so for the audience too.
Runs until 5 October 2025
