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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

A matter of laughs and death: Good Grief

Another week in lockdown passes. The chances of theatres reopening anytime soon still seem remote. And so experiments with the possibilities for theatrical streams continues with Good Grief

Theatre streams have been filmed plays, staged readings or even staged like a zoom meeting. Good Grief plays with the feeling of a staged production. Scene changes and props are moved around on camera and titles pop up on screen to set the scene. 

It opens at the end of a party. It looks like it's been a big night of drinking and going on. But it turns out that it was after a wake. In between sorting out the mess from the party Cat (Sian Clifford) and Adam (Nikesh Patel) stumble around the topic of losing someone they both loved to cancer.

The piece tracks Cat and Adam coming to terms with their loss, their feelings of guilt about leaving things not the way they had hoped. And they're trying to navigate the niceties and expected behaviours following a death in modern Britain. What's the best way to distribute the belongings of someone who has died? Should atheists have funerals in a church? Is pink underwear a sign of moving on?

Clifford and Patel create an intimate and funny portrayal of two people with a past. They're muddling through to find a way forward and move on. With or without shagging each other. There's also an honesty in the writing and performances that draw you into it. And of course, Clifford being of Fleabag fame, gives the piece a jolt of star power.

A piece about Grief and loss, even a funny one, may not be everyone's idea of a good time during a pandemic. But on the other hand, although so many people have died in the past year, it seems abstract. Here death and its impact on those around it is front and centre. 

Written and created by Lorien Haynes and directed by Natalie Abrahami, it is available to stream from 15 February on Original Theatre Online. It’s also worth checking the other productions available to stream on the site as well.

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