Whole Headache and Emily Gibson’s new play, The Corpse in the Room, is playing at the Calder Bookshop Theatre as part of the Lambeth Fringe.
This cosy 32-seater, hidden behind a wonderful theatre Bookshop for all your secondhand needs, is the perfect place to find this intimate two-hander.
Written and performed with great maturity – Gibson is Woman opposite Iiya Wray’s ‘Corpse’ – The Corpse in the Room begins as the blackest of comedies.
Wray is prone on the floor, twisted in death, as Gibson watches, afraid to sleep before her boyfriend, the killer, returns, chattering brightly to tune out the horror before her.
Things take a surreal turn as the Woman gives in to her fatigue and the Corpse reanimates himself, proving to be a well-spoken young man with plans and a decent life he’s angry to have left without any choice.
The play doesn’t labour over unnecessary details like the manner of the corpse’s death, or what the woman’s daly life is like, instead letting gestures tell the story.
There’s no complicated set or lighting cues, and only a couple of snatches of songs on the radio add to the sound. It’s a play about talking, dreaming, hoping, and experiencing.
It isn’t just about the woman having the courage to change her life but to follow the clues and glimmer of hope presented by the dead man on her rug.
Emma Gibson directs alongside Joshua Robey, catching the pathos, fear, intimacy and enjoyment of those “small things, that don’t really matter’.
I found The Corpse in the Room a very accomplished piece of work that is deeply touching by the end, as off-piste as the treatment may be.
The Corpse in the Room has now finished its run, but I confidently predict we have not seen the last of this show, nor of Gibson’s work as a writer.
For other Lambeth Fringe shows up to 20 Oct, go here.
*****
Image credit: Josh Davies