Fair warning: The Bunker is NOT the show you came here to see. Award-winning writer Martin Dockery was too busy tending to his 6-year-old “baby” to bother writing the epic script about American fascism that he promised us. Instead, you’re invited to watch him and Andrew Broaddus bicker their way through a completely different play (or at least the middle third of one) about the last two actors left on Earth after an apocalypse.
Under Vanessa Quesnelle’s deceptively stripped-down direction, The Bunker becomes a brilliantly metatextual headtrip that doesn’t merely break the fourth wall; it pulverizes it into a fine powder. Andrew Broaddus takes on the hyperverbal role in this two-hander, delivering a throat-clearing stem-winder of an introduction that takes up more time than the intended act itself. Dockery, playing Broaddus’ half brother, sits on the sidelines being uncharacteristically taciturn until their familial tragedy is brought to the forefront.
For longtime fans (like myself) of Martin Dockery’s brain twisting sci-fi dramas, The Bunker initially comes across like a pointed self-parody of his own self-invented genre. The topics of disappointment, disconnection and political divides hit unusually close to home, despite being dipped in a candy coating of comedically circular wordplay. This emergency ration of irrationality goes down easy at first, but the pervasive sense of approaching doom that suffuses the surrealistic finale will take days to fully digest.
The Bunker
Peach Venue, Orlando Family Stage
60 minutes; 13 & up
$15
Get tickets
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This article appears in May 14-20, 2025.