Breathing Corpses by Laura Wade was an evening of murder, suicide and black humour. It interweaves three stories: Amy, a hotel cleaner who discovers more than the usual amount of corpses, Jim who discovers more than a nasty smell in one of his storage units and Kate who discovers her boyfriend may not be as mild mannered as she thought.
The scene opens with a hotel room and a corpse. The Burton Taylor Studio's intimate stage allows Amy to come into the room and apologise for disturbing the audience before it becomes clear she has discovered yet another body. She proceeds to talk to the body of Jim for some time, interspersing humour (“not surprised you didn’t touch the shortbread”), realism (“why wouldn’t you do this at the Ritz instead of a dump like this”) and poignancy (“do you miss the sky?”).
The scene changes to Jim’s story and how he discovered a body in one of his units. The quote from the play’s advert: “When a man has lost all happiness, he’s not alive. Call him a breathing corpse” is certainly bleak, and the character it most applies to is Jim. The unfolding story isn’t, however, so full of despair that it is depressing; more, it reminds us of human frailty and how easily happiness, or what passes for it, can be destroyed through a single moment.
The scene with Kate and her boyfriend, Ben, was excellently portrayed. It was easy to relate to the dialogue and her anger with her boyfriend’s seemingly endless passivity. It transpires that Kate, too, has found a body, but, rather than it traumatising her, it merely annoys her that she has to devote so much time to helping the police. The dialogue is particularly excellent in this scene.
We return to Amy’s storyline, in a cyclical ending, which, without giving too much away, provides a rather beautiful if somewhat worrying finale. The mixture of lighter scenes and lines with rather brutal violence creates an interesting juxtaposition throughout the production.
The play runs until Saturday and can definitely be recommended. Perhaps a nice murder on Valentine’s night would be fun?