Ambulance

Synopsis

A gritty urban landscape at night, where the boundaries between reality and delusion blur like the neon lights reflecting off rain-slicked streets

Ellis, a woman haunted by past trauma, stumbles through a nocturnal world populated by a cast of damaged characters. As she searches for a long-lost child, her path intersects with Johnny, a man obsessed with laundry; Pedro, an increasingly unhinged father; and Martin, a burn victim with a penchant for binoculars. Their fractured narratives weave together in a tapestry of desperation, delusion, and dark humour as they navigate the harsh realities of life on society’s margins.

Gregory Motton’s Ambulance is a surreal, darkly comic exploration of urban alienation and the human capacity for both cruelty and compassion. Through a series of fragmented scenes and disjointed conversations, Motton crafts a nightmarish vision of a world where the lines between victim and aggressor, sanity and madness, are constantly shifting. The play’s non-linear structure and use of repetitive dialogue create a sense of disorientation that mirrors the characters’ own psychological states. As an ambulance circles the periphery of the action, its presence serves as both a symbol of hope and a reminder of the characters’ precarious existence. Ambulance challenges audiences to confront uncomfortable truths about societal neglect, mental illness, and the struggle for human connection in an increasingly isolating world.