Amara Okereke and Kyle Rowe in Echo [Lidia Crisafulli]

SUSAN Eve Haar’s play, billed as a psychological thriller, explores the topical subject of reproductive technology.

Echo opens in a hotel bedroom. She (Amara Okereke) and He (Kyle Rowe) are celebrating their 10th anniversary, though neither seem particularly happy or connected.

They drink champagne and flirt until things take an unexpectedly dark turn. An erotic game spirals into something more dangerous. The woman’s mood abruptly turns – she is overwhelmed by despair and says she wants to die, insisting that she’s crushed by her infertility.

Yet when her partner offers her the gift of a child, through admittedly unorthodox means, her initial response is anger.

Haar’s central conceit is strong, but her characterisation is uneven and the dialogue quickly becomes repetitive. Okereke does her best, yet the swings in the woman’s personality, from seductive to suicidal, stretch our credibility.

Rowe’s character suffers a similar fate. His rapid emotional shifts lack clear motivation or psychological grounding. The one-room setting adds to the dramatic stasis, presenting further challenges for director Abigail Zealey-Bess, who also has to manage some clumsy narrative twists.

The second part of this 80-minute, interval-free drama, is shorter and marginally stronger. Peiyao Wang’s set is subtly updated.

Twenty years later, a couple (Okereke and Rowe) arrive to stay in the same drab hotel room. Both are strangely familiar. The woman is there to scatter her mother’s ashes, and there’s an eerie sense of déjà vu in the older man’s speech and mannerisms.

Echo has been produced before and it seems to have lost something in development. Despite the actors’ committed performances, the clunky storyline and repetitious dialogue drain tension from what could have been an engaging drama had it been allowed to breathe.

Until August 17
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