Hackney Empire

The Smilin' State

3 June 2008 - 21 June 2008

Venue: HE Studio

Price(s): £12 Concs £9, Groups of 10+ £5, Previews (3, 4 June) £5

It's the height of summer in the American mid-west town of Lake City, Minnesota. In the rural outskirts of Lake City, dishevelled agrarian father and son double-act Milton and Bruce Huffman are standing in the middle of their dead, recently repossessed, cornfield marking time while surviving on cup cakes and cola and waiting for the end of the world.

 As Ethel, Milton's fruit wearing wife, explains during one of her more lucid moments, ‘If ya pigs start dyin', ya cows stop milkin', ya house gets dry rot an' ya baby gets possessed by the Devil, then ya gotta say there's another power at work somewhere.'

But things are looking up for the Huffman's. Redemption is on its way in the form of a rapidly approaching tornado packed storm. A storm they believe is a sign of the nearing rapture. Coming to claim the land and to remove and ‘save' the Huffman's is ever-optimistic Bankers' representative and former classmate of Bruce's, Todd Tesch. But as the second coming is about to take place, the Huffman's aren't keen to let this Good Samaritan take them away from what they believe is rightfully theirs. The ensuing confrontation between rational thought and blind faith features a shooting, a decomposed body, an evangelical polka dance, a flying farmer, and a re-birth.

Welcome to the Smilin' State.

Written by Noel White
Directed by Omar F. Okai