"Nothing is in greater opposition to life, than art", playwright Sergio Blanco tells us at the climax of his kaleidoscopic piece of multi-self-referential theatre, When You Pass Over My Tomb. And he's right. Art freezes life in portraits, approximates it in dialogue, traduces it in seductive verse. Go and look at the ornate rooms of the Garrick Club in London, and you'll see hundreds of great actors from across the centuries hanging on the walls, captured in moments of high drama by artists, every one of them lacking any spark of the life they so skilfully embodied on the stage.
And so this play is a paean to death: its inspiration, its freedom and, daringly, even its sexual allure.
Blanco, a French-Uruguyan master of the avant-garde, has created a piece of theatre more dazzlingly complex in its structure than anything I've ever seen before. It doesn't just break the fourth wall. It builds fifth and sixth walls, knocks them down, installs windows in them, and then discovers the windows are actually mirrors through which yet more walls are reflected.
From the start, the boundaries between life and death, stage and audience, are blurred and then bulldozed aside. The three actors talk directly to us, clearly not working from a script (even specifically thanking this reviewer for attending this evening - don't mention it), getting to know us, before revealing that each of them - the actors, not the characters they are playing - is in fact dead. I'm guessing wildly here, but I had the impression that the death stories each of them told about themselves had some echo of a real- or near-accident they had experienced: a mountain-biking catastrophe, a car crash, a mugging that went too far. There is nothing that makes a lie more convincing than being embellished with a little truth.
Having established these fictional versions of themselves, they then proceed to use these "autofictions" to take on acting parts in the play itself. The central role, Veda, played by Veda Dharwar, portrays none other than an equally fictionalised version of the playwright Sergio Blanco himself, who sets out to commit assisted suicide so that an imprisoned necrophiliac called Khalid (Arthur Bown-Mazzoni) can dig him up and have deep and meaningful sex with his rotting corpse. Along the way Blanco has several meetings with the deeply sympathetic Dr Wollstonecraft (yes, this play is a feast for Frankenstein fans) played by the ubiquitous Jem Hunter (who also designed the brilliant poster for this production). While digging into philosophical questions around the meaning of life and art, the play constantly second-guesses the audience, with characters discussing their own fictional nature as easily as they inhabit their roles. On several occasions Khalid or Wollstonecraft pause to congratulate Blanco on how well he has written the current scene, and at one stage they even refer to a copy of the script, held by an audience member.
This is Heavy Meta. And, despite the dark subject matter, it's fascinating and great fun, like Tristram Shandy on amphetamines.
Where it's less successful is in the style of presentation. Blanco's script seems to call for a level of heightened vigour and focus which is not quite hit. Dharwar convincingly portrays the playwright's easygoing nature, but he feels almost too laid back. He frequently puts his hand in front of his mouth when speaking, which causes some mumbling and makes him look somehow separated from the action. Disinterested, yes please. Uninterested, no. Dharwar is an immensely appealing presence, but just needs a couple more turns of the intensity screw.
Similarly, there are sections where the actors are playing themselves, and it feels as though they should be 100% convincing, but there is still a sense of "acting" in the delivery, which undermines the carefully constructed fake reality. It should, I felt, be more like The Office and less Being John Malkovich.
Nevertheless, navigating the multiple levels of truth in this unique play is an incredibly complex challenge, and one this production delivers with clarity, wit and aplomb. Moreover, without the phenomenal theatrical knowledge of director Hannah Davis, Sergio Blanco would still be a blanco page to most audiences. The show itself may not be quite as bold and natural as its own script, but it has necrophiliac sex with your brain at every opportunity, and, somewhat alarmingly, that feels rather pleasant.