Play Review: The Antipodes

The Antipodes
Voodoo Theatre Company
March 7-16, 2025

How many types of stories are there, and what happens when the world runs out? Overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, rebirth… Annie Baker’s The Antipodes is simultaneously all and none of the above. It’s “a play about people telling stories about telling stories.” If that premise sounds exhausting, that’s because it is — but it’s also darkly comedic and surprisingly clever. 

In director Jack Cobabe’s production of Baker’s 2017 script, eight people sit around a table in a dull conference room, spitballing ideas for the next great story. A monstrous tower of LaCroix cases looms upstage; a water cooler and a fake plant sit idly in a corner. Sandy (Matthew Ivan Bennett) is the chairman of the brainstorming session, whose nonchalant charisma conceals a nagging undercurrent of misogyny and manipulation. 

The meat of the play arrives in a series of captivating monologues, starting with anecdotes about losing one’s virginity and gossipy rumors about ex-employees and later spiraling into fairytale coming-of-age fables and absurd, rambling creation myths. One of the most tender and  thought-provoking stories comes from Danny M2 (Sophia Van Nederveen), reluctantly answering the question of her biggest regret in life by recounting how she failed to pick up the chickens she was supposed to protect while working on a farm. Nothing bad happened, but “it could have,” she insists with far more vulnerability than Dave (Pedro Flores)’s hollow assertion that he’s grateful for his father’s suicide because it “made me who I am.”

An indiscriminate amount of time passes, marked only by minimalist sound and lighting cues accompanied by a shuffling of bodies around the table. Bubbly secretary Sarah (Zoe Fossen) pops in and out to take everyone’s lunch order and deliver news from the omnipotent executives who never appear on stage. As the coworkers grow weary of their singular, never-ending task, the atmosphere grows increasingly apocalyptic and the overwhelming surreality falls flat at times, most notably when notetaker Brian (Jaden Richards) enacts a vaguely pagan ritual while the rest of the team has fallen asleep. The scene veers into caricature, though it does explain why the playbill credits a “witchcraft consultant” as part of the crew. The emotional core of The Antipodes falters as the dialogue becomes less personality-driven and the thematic statements more heavy-handed — this critique applies more to Baker’s writing than the ensemble’s performances, however, which work hard to overcome its limitations.

The show is performed with a 15-minute intermission that is not included in the original script, but it’s a smart decision that gives the audience some much-needed breathing room away from the claustrophobic corporate nightmare. Baker also wrote that “both Eleanor and Adam were hired due to pressure from HR,” implying Eleanor to be the only woman at the table and Adam the only person of color. But in Voodoo Theatre Company’s rendition, only two characters are played by white men — Sandy and Danny M1 (Kelly Branan), a choice that may seem at first to dilute the satire, but ultimately serves to highlight their privileges as the emotionally detached leader and crass veteran employee, respectively. 

Bennett’s performance as Sandy is Steve Jobs on steroids; the resemblance begins at the black turtleneck and TED Talk-esque speeches, continuing throughout his portrayal of an outwardly successful, well-respected man who earns a private reputation as a demanding, abusive boss. Olivia Custodio shines as Eleanor, whose pride in her knitting projects and unabashed love for hard-boiled eggs make her the most genuinely likeable of the bunch — and who also gets the honor of telling the play’s final story. 

The Antipodes is not Baker’s most famous work; that title belongs to either her Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Flick (2013) or her A24-produced mother-daughter film Janet Planet (2023). I do, however, feel it is an important piece that merits further retellings and analysis. In his letter from the director, Cobabe calls the play “an exercise in empathy,” and it succeeds in critiquing the bastardization of storytelling for profit rather than for pleasure or a shared search for meaning. Baker and Cobabe both excel at finding the extraordinary in the mundane, and isn’t that what stories are all about, anyway? 

Get tickets to see The Antipodes at Midvalley Performing Arts Center on March 14, 15, or 16 at saltlakecountyarts.org/events/the-antipodes.

Read more reviews of local theatre productions:
Play Review: Full Color
Play Review: Bitter Lemon