Tom Fowler’s gently amusing play has all the ingredients of a fast-moving road movie, satirically flavoured by a context of rampant capitalism.
Hope (Laura Checkley) is returning home via the Koka Kola airline to the People’s Republic of Koka Kola after twenty-four years' absence. She is telling a joke to another passenger about an angel worrying about the invasion of Earth by destructive giants. Unfortunately, the other angels and their CEO are not worried about this because they have sent a message to the giants to leave. The story is funny and sets the tone for what follows.
Not being able to contact her sister, Hope spends the night on the sofa of the trans woman Isla (Mary Malone), the kindly waitress she meets in a bar, only to find the following day they are both forced to go on the run pursued by the gun-toting police officer Wayne Cartwright (Felix Scott), who had already murdered Isla’s sister.
Heading to the BP Nature Reserve where Hope believes her sister is living, they are helped to evade the authorities en route by a passenger on the Koka Kola Railway and a lorry driver who likes American country music.
Dropped off at Facebook Forest, they rescue a sacked forest ranger, Ali (Nima Taleghani), who travels on with them to meet Hope’s sister Lor (Amaka Okafor), who Hope thinks will help her find the son she left behind twenty-four years before.
It’s an amusing play with believable, well-performed central characters and a plot line that hooks the audience. Although it touches on a few serious issues and includes moments of violence, these are dealt with superficially as the play encourages a light, entertaining mood of hope.