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Death becomes her: A Brief List Of Everyone Who Died @finborough

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For a natural process, death is not a topic that comes up naturally for people. We ask how people are doing but expect the response to be “I’m great”, not “I’m not dead yet”. And so for the main character in A Brief List of Everyone Who Died, Graciela has a death issue. Starting with when she was five and found out only after the matter that her parents had her beloved dog euthanised. So Graciela decides that nobody she loves will die from then on. And so this piece becomes a fruitless attempt at how she spends her life trying to avoid death while it is all around her. It’s currently having its world premiere  at the Finborough Theatre . As the play title suggests, it is a brief list of life moments where death and life intervene for the main character, from the passing of relatives, cancer, suicides, accidents and the loss of parents. Playwright Jacob Marx Rice plots the critical moments of the lives of these characters through their passing or the passing of those around them. Howeve
News: a most predictable week

  • Pope dies and is buried Friday. On Monday morning there was much alarm at the thought that flags on buildings would be flying at half mast on the day the heir to the throne would be married. The fact that they are flying at half mast on various buildings is something to pause about in Protestant Britain. But the problem disappeared once the decision to change the wedding to Saturday so the Prince could attend the funeral. How in 500 years things change. The Guardian is calling it the slow death of Protestant England. Protestants can take heart that at least the future King is marrying a divorcee, and if the Daily Mirror is to be believed, he was furious that he had to change the date to Saturday. The front page had the classic headline: NO WEDDING AND A FUNERAL. Oh and given the wedding is now on Saturday, it will clash with the Grand National, and so after some horse trading, the race will be delayed by 25 minutes to enable the BBC to cover both...
  • The election was called today which was probably the worst-kept secret in politics, since as far back as May last year this date was flagged as the date for the election. Polls are showing a closing of the gap between Labour and Conservatives, but due to the voting system here that will not be enough for an upset (at this stage). This election will be the first election using weblogs, but this one won't be (unless the campaign just happens to run across my travels).

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