The show must go on…… and so it did.
Plagued by two lock downs over the past two years, Eye Contact Theatre’s production of Laura Wade’s BREATHING CORPSES finally took to the Kings Cross Theatre stage, albeit with two performers struck with the plague and replaced with book in hand performers adept at sight reading.
BREATHING CORPSES begins merrily enough with a hotel maid discovering a body in a bed of the room she is to clean. It’s not the first time this has happened to her and she fears a reputation will wrap itself around her, a shroud of unemployment. This being the second time around, she is slightly sanguine about it, beginning a conversation with the deceased, enquiring about his life and death, and revealing a little about herself.
The play then moves to the office of a storage firm where the proprietor and his apprentice are visited by the proprietor’s wife where a scene of domestic complacency plays itself out between a narrative of current bad smells emanating from a storage unit reminiscent of a past experience when perishable goods spoiled and rotted. Mention of maggots and decay reflect on the relationship of the spouses.
BREATHING CORPSES plunges into a much darker tone with the next vignette, a man and woman in an escalating sado-masochistic relationship. Her anger management control is way off the dial after discovering a body in the bushes while walking her partner’s despised pooch. It’s fucked up her day, she kicks the dog, punches her partner, and literally unleashes a lethal confrontation.
A flash forward to the storage unit doesn’t alleviate the doom and gloom but the dark humour is rediscovered in the epilogue with Amy the maid fearing déjà vu as she enters a hotel room to find a form covered in a sheet. Checking for a heart beat, the presumed posthumous awakens with a start, and an awkward moment evolves into a macabre flirtation with a minuscule mix of menace.
BREATHING CORPSES works best when leavened with humour, rigor mortis setting in with the more dour, introspective stretches. Its remains, however, are a theatrical autopsy on a world hermetically sealed off from life.
BREATHING CORPSES by Laura Wade presented by Eye Contact Theatre plays KXT at the Kings Cross Hotel till April 23