TheatreFringe

The Last Drop

★★★★
VenueZOO Playground
Date Seen9 August 2026

The Last Drop is a domestic, absurdist parlour drama in Portuguese with supertitles, somewhere between Pinter and Beckett, built around a crack in the ceiling of a flat about to be sold. As the leak spreads, the play opens out onto city living, water, generations, ownership and the precarious business of keeping everything balanced.

There is an essence of horror laced with humour here, but the production understands exactly how far to push its absurdity. The hyperbolic acting fits the tone perfectly, turning an already strange situation into something properly grotesque. The tiny and (exceptionally though warm) Zoo Playground is used brilliantly, and the set does far more than the size of its stage ought to allow.

Then there is the lighting: grotesque, unsettling and pitched well for the cartoonish world being created. The result is a small production with a surprisingly large theatrical imagination.

Very good. Really quite something to see.

Runs 7–9 August, 11–16 August, 18–23 August and 25–30 August at 7pm.

Published 09/08/2026
Review by James Fox
The Last Drop

About the Show

Theatre CompanyManás Theatre Lab
DirectorDante Passarelli, Fernanda Zancopé
WriterDante Passarelli, Fernanda Zancopé
PerformersFernanda Zancopé, Ernani Sanchez, Alessandra Arvati, Eduardo Leoni
Run7–30 August 2026
Production DescriptionA couple awaits a property agent in a decaying historic apartment when a mould stain appears and an apparently unstoppable leak begins. A man brought in to repair it disappears, and the spreading stain uncovers buried history within the building.