Flying Ant Day,
Union Theatre, London
Producer: Strange Kin Theatre
Writer: Joey Ellis
Director: Dean Elliott
Fraser Adams, Kirsty Campbell, Fiona Cheng, Yeo Dana, Daniel Hintner, Alex Gannon, Gayané Kaligian, Heather Kirk, Reagan Madilyn Martin, Kiera Murray, Paulo Rivera, Louie Wanless.
Running time: 100 minutes, including interval.
Flying ant day – when ants live, reproduce and die – together with the human moment of death are among the less discussed topics even in the voluble world of social media.
Writer Joey Ellis takes on this unlikely twinning in a play that crowds a dysfunctional family around a death bed while winged ants throng the air.
Directed by Dean Elliott, it delivers genuine comedy from the opening declaration “I died in the morning. I’m a morning person” to the indignant question “what is wrong with people?” – a line made hilarious because it’s spoken by one of the many people in this play with a great deal wrong: Reagan Madilyn Martin as the alcoholic wife of the son (Alex Gannon) of the mother who lies dying.
She takes her chair in the sick room, alongside her husband’s relentlessly Instagramming sister (Kiera Murray) and her desperate-to-please boyfriend (Louie Wanless). Another sister, played by Heather Kirk, is in a lesbian relationship with Yeo Dana, who plays the part of a schoolteacher. Her awkward teenager biology students, played by Daniel Hintner and Kirsty Campbell Ritchie, have also made their way into hospital.
Despite their questionable plan to record the looming death for their biology homework, they manage to establish themselves as the most rational people present, not yet guilty of the stupidity of their parents.
Bizarre though it is, the play’s dynamic keeps us unexpectedly and happily entertained for the first half of the action. The abruptness of the second half, however, confounds us. Fiona Cheng as “a death doula”, who has drained the dying mother’s finances on the understanding she will make the death experience as positive as possible for all involved, simply disappears and, after a great deal is left unresolved, the ending feels tacked on.
I would also say the ants deserve a bigger role. While the play attempts an explanation of what it is like to breathe your last breath, it leaves largely unexplored the mysteries of flying ants, which incidentally are winged for more than a day.
In so many ways, they are far more impressive than we are, but for all its ambitions to tackle unaddressed realities, this play fails to nail that point and more generally misses the chance to be more resonant than it is.
Barbara Lewis © 2026.
Flying Ant Day,
Union Theatre, London
Producer: Strange Kin Theatre
Writer: Joey Ellis
Director: Dean Elliott
Fraser Adams, Kirsty Campbell, Fiona Cheng, Yeo Dana, Daniel Hintner, Alex Gannon, Gayané Kaligian, Heather Kirk, Reagan Madilyn Martin, Kiera Murray, Paulo Rivera, Louie Wanless.
Running time: 100 minutes, including interval.
Flying ant day – when ants live, reproduce and die – together with the human moment of death are among the less discussed topics even in the voluble world of social media.
Writer Joey Ellis takes on this unlikely twinning in a play that crowds a dysfunctional family around a death bed while winged ants throng the air.
Directed by Dean Elliott, it delivers genuine comedy from the opening declaration “I died in the morning. I’m a morning person” to the indignant question “what is wrong with people?” – a line made hilarious because it’s spoken by one of the many people in this play with a great deal wrong: Reagan Madilyn Martin as the alcoholic wife of the son (Alex Gannon) of the mother who lies dying.
She takes her chair in the sick room, alongside her husband’s relentlessly Instagramming sister (Kiera Murray) and her desperate-to-please boyfriend (Louie Wanless). Another sister, played by Heather Kirk, is in a lesbian relationship with Yeo Dana, who plays the part of a schoolteacher. Her awkward teenager biology students, played by Daniel Hintner and Kirsty Campbell Ritchie, have also made their way into hospital.
Despite their questionable plan to record the looming death for their biology homework, they manage to establish themselves as the most rational people present, not yet guilty of the stupidity of their parents.
Bizarre though it is, the play’s dynamic keeps us unexpectedly and happily entertained for the first half of the action. The abruptness of the second half, however, confounds us. Fiona Cheng as “a death doula”, who has drained the dying mother’s finances on the understanding she will make the death experience as positive as possible for all involved, simply disappears and, after a great deal is left unresolved, the ending feels tacked on.
I would also say the ants deserve a bigger role. While the play attempts an explanation of what it is like to breathe your last breath, it leaves largely unexplored the mysteries of flying ants, which incidentally are winged for more than a day.
In so many ways, they are far more impressive than we are, but for all its ambitions to tackle unaddressed realities, this play fails to nail that point and more generally misses the chance to be more resonant than it is.
Barbara Lewis © 2026.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, plays, theatre • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, theatre