In a near future, when the world is racked with climate problems and pollution, a nuclear bomb has been set off, killing over a million people. Deep in a secret bunker, the strange but well-dressed man responsible sits at a table with a blindfolded journalist. He may be a mass-murdering terrorist, but he wants an interview to discuss the matter.
The stark concept of Echoes is simple and potentially brilliant. The play by Lorenzo De Liberato lets us watch this uncanny situation unfold, as the idealistic but intelligent young reporter and the cynical supervillain spar with each other over matters of ideology and reason, with matters growing ever more fraught and a real possibility of death thrown into the mix.
The trouble is, clearly something has gotten lost in the translation of the material. Aside from a tendency for the conversation to go round in circles, there are moments where the motivations and explanations given by the characters seemed to jump oddly in grating ways.
While Marco Quaglia and Stefano Patti do credible work throughout, contrasting well the differences between the men, it's almost impossible to empathise with either as their positions are never quite clear enough.
To make matters worse, the few significant plot turns are signposted miles off and as a result lead to the whole coalescing into a bit of an abstracted mess towards the end.