Book and Lyrics: Joe Venable
Music: Kat Kleve
Director: Jennifer Lane Baker
Created in just six days by Joe Venable and Kat Kleve, new musical No Flirting in the Bunker Please is a promising new show set in a semi-dystopian future following a catastrophic ‘event’ which takes its nascent ideas and weaves a believable rom-com with plenty of obstacles to keep the central couple apart. Acknowledging in the programme note that this 60-minute piece has a way to go, nonetheless, its creators and cast have established a strong scenario, two characters with more to give and the architecture of what could be a poignant reflection on young love and a willingness to step into the unknown.
16-year-olds Denzel and Lily are forbidden from starting a relationship by the managers of the “Bunker”, a military facility below the “Surface”, where a handful of children were sent to survive a nuclear event. Knowing it’s dangerous, they cannot resist falling for each other anyway, and their friends show them a way to be together. But when Lily decides to leave, wanting to see where her mother came from, Denzel is reluctant to give up the only life he has known.
Venable’s world creation as book writer and lyricist is very well considered, and while there is more to iron out in this confined space, the impression of life for Lily and Denzel is both familiar and sufficiently restrictive to shape their different motivations. With no staging in director Jennifer Lane Baker’s production, the creators give very little away about the physicality of the bunker, only that it is eight small rooms and about twice as many people. It certainly creates a sense of mystery, but the next phase of No Flirting in the Bunker Please will need to offer up a little more thinking to sustain a longer show.
Lily sings of the sky, the sun and the stars, but Venable never explains how she knows those words, having lived entirely underground. Has this community perhaps created its own mythology about the Surface, like a fairy tale that sustains them by speaking of nature and freedom on the earth their parents knew? Likewise, Venable includes throwaway references to different uses of language with Denzel saying he doesn’t want to be “untogether” with Lily and later claiming to be in “high dungeon” instead of dudgeon; are these clues to how English is evolving (or red herrings maybe) and does that tell the audience anything about the age of this group or the limitations of its development during their containment here?
Having the two characters narrate the story, describing each other’s actions, is a nice touch, and there’s a believable connection between Becca Carmichael’s Lily and Benjamin Bortone Page’s Denzel, which sustains momentum as their story unfolds. A future iteration could say more about why they love each other and indeed why relationships are restricted at all, and do the characters really need to be 16, which stretches credibility a little in performance, bunker rules could just as easily restrict contact until they are 25.
The fact that there are more questions than answers in this version of No Flirting in the Bunker Please is a good sign; the scenario is interesting enough to demand more substance, but for a show created in six days, there is a lot to celebrate.
Runs until 6 December 2025
