Edinburgh Fringe 2025
The End of the Line
Edinburgh University Theatre Company
Genre: Comedic, Comedy, Theatre
Venue: The Bedlam
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
The End of the Line is a dark comedy from Edinburgh University Theatre Company, performed at Bedlam Theatre during the 2025 Fringe. The action takes place inside a recreated 1980s-style London Underground carriage, where six people, a government minister, a fortune teller, a busker, a couple, and the train’s driver, find themselves unable to leave after news breaks of an approaching nuclear strike.
Across an hour, the strangers talk, argue, and reflect, swapping confessions and carrying out impulsive last actions as they reckon with the little time left. The atmosphere shifts between dark humour, candid revelations, and moments of connection, with the sound of 1980s music marking the dreaded passing minutes.
Review
As lights come up on this new dark comedy by Alice Humphries, the set, a London tube train, draws us immediately into the space and setting of the piece.
Music is used to set both the mood and the milieu, creating a backdrop that supports and colours the unfolding action. The physical theatrics are simple, yet they are well coordinated, contributing to the overall clarity of the staging without distracting from the story.
This is a slick comedy. At times, the acting feels a little over the top for the setting, but it is the well penned dark comedy narrative that carries it off and keeps the audience engaged. The central plot is one that we all need to think carefully about. It is presented here as a fun and funny university production, yet one that carries important and timely story undertones, reminding us of the bigger themes that sit beneath the humour.
The style shifts between realism and farce. While this creates variety, it would be stronger if the production decided more consciously which of the two to embrace fully. The story explores how quickly meltdown can occur when panic sets in and when claustrophobia begins to take hold. One of the coping mechanisms shown is the telling of stories to one another, a thread that runs through the piece and gives it moments of intimacy.
The set, though it looks home made, more than does the job in evoking the scene. The joined up cast work fluently together, moving the narrative forward as a cohesive ensemble. The audience is invited to consider a very specific and unsettling question: how would you respond if you found yourself trapped on an underground train with fellow passengers during a nuclear incident, with only an hour to go before the fatal blast? One of the production’s strengths lies in how it handles a sudden change of fortunes, delivering it with dramatic weight that avoids overstatement.
The story engages from start to finish, and the narrative flows well. However, the dialogue sometimes varies too much between naturalism and melodrama, which can be jarring. The characters are fairly well drawn, with scope for a bit more detail and depth, but each gets to reveal aspects of their personalities, quirsk and their takes on Life and the situation they find themselves in.
.The gags and payoffs in the script, while often sharp, are occasionally a little too clunkily inserted into the mouths of the actors, momentarily breaking the flow. The question of how we fill an hour as we blunder towards an inevitable fatal end is posed more than once, will we pass the time with anecdotes, or is there something more imporant we might do at the end of everything?
The production offers a moment of reflection with the line about a tiny grain in God’s huge sandpit, pointing to our deep wish to be alive in the face of mortality. There is scope here to go further and deeper into the earlier establishing panic that comes with the realisation of time running out. The pacing is too slow in some of the duologues, and the atmosphere in those moments calms a little bit unrealistically given the stakes.
The play asks another direct and unsettling question: what would you do if you only had a few minutes left? The script carries with it a touch of a middle class, 1980s Play for Today feel, which adds a layer of familiarity for some audiences. Beneath the humour and tension lie moral messages about bravely confronting the future, thinking beyond oneself, and living with honesty.
The virtues of this production are clear. The acting is consistently good. The script is witty and contains strong darkly comic elements. The central plot is based on a very contemporary and worrying scenario, one that lingers in the mind. I am not sure I will ever be as relaxed on a tube train again after watching it.
The ending is inventive, and playful with final moments I won’t reveal, providing a satisfying contrast to the gravity of the subject matter. Further development would require dramaturgy and a decision about a clearer arc for the narrative, which would give the work a more defined shape. Overall, this scenario theatre piece has both heart and depth, with scope to tighten and develop in terms of theatre craft and consistency. It is well worth an hour of your time.
I am glad that young writers are taking on this material and exploring it through dark comedy theatre. What we have here is, in essence, a modern Ealing Comedy. If we must go to our end, the play suggests, let us go with the lights flashing, the music playing, and let us dance together to our glorious oblivion. When an exploration of the inevitable fatal ending of things is such a proud pleaser, what more could you ask for?
