Laura Wade’s Breathing Corpses at The Alma is a production arising from Gatecrash Theatre’s ‘Smash and Grab’ project, which gives members of the company the opportunity to be mentored by well-established professionals. Director Natasha Garbutt has been under the watchful guidance of Laura Barnes, and designers Paul Marks and Amber Sadler have been supported by Sue Condie. Breathing Corpses is certainly a play that needs to be delivered with a considerable degree of expertise, for it is far from straightforward. It has a teasingly complex narrative structure and there are mysteries that are never fully resolved. It is full of hints that apparently disconnected characters and events may in fact be closely associated, and we are invited to make links between such themes as death and sex, but these are not made explicit.
This production starts with a mimed sequence under an eerie greenish light during which the characters repeat actions that presage key moments from what is to follow. Musician and composer Charlie Miles sits at the side of the stage accompanying their actions with heavily distorted electric guitar. The action proper starts in a hotel room, and chambermaid Amy is busy cleaning away while simultaneously giving a vigorous rendition of ‘Crazy Right Now’. She suddenly becomes aware that the guest is still in bed, and that he is dead. We gather that this is not the first time that she has discovered a corpse in a hotel room; Amy seems more than a little unlucky in this regard. The corpse is Jim, and he has left a note. We travel back in time and meet the living Jim, his wife Elaine, and Jim’s employee Ray. Jim runs a self-storage business; he and Elaine are middle-aged, fond of each other and trying to adjust to the absence of grown up children. Later, Jim will struggle to come to terms with something much darker. We also meet another, younger couple; self-employed, over-worked Kate and her boyfriend Ben. Their relationship is more sensual, but far from straightforward, not least because Kate has a volcanic temper and can be violent.
Amber Sadler is sweetly endearing as the young chambermaid given to chatting away to corpses, though some of her lines were rushed in the opening scene. Steve O’Halloran is equally good as Jim, rendered almost catatonic by a horrible, haunting experience. Anna Friend is excellent as his wife Elaine, relentlessly cheerful and positive one moment, then desperately screaming ‘Do something!’ at him the next. I was somewhat less convinced by the relationship between Kate and Ben. Rebecca Rocker conveyed Kate’s exasperation and anger very well indeed, and the violent row between her and Carli Green’s Ben was conveyed with real force, but I found it hard to believe in them as a couple. However this may well be a fault in the writing, for although Laura Wade has created interesting characters, there are often too many unanswered questions about their lives beyond the action seen on stage. And there is one I have not yet mentioned, Charlie. He is central to the play’s denouement, but is little more than a plot device, and an unsatisfactory one at that. Roberto Glennie plays him very ably, and he and Amber Sadler handle a key final scene together very well indeed, but Charlie does not seem to belong in the same play as the other characters. Overall, I found this play intriguing, but not entirely satisfying. Yes, there are moments of dark comedy and there are sequences that create an uneasy shiver or two, and the very clever plot construction has some surprising twists and turns; but Breathing Corpses doesn’t seem to be very clear about what it is trying to say. However, Gatecrash Theatre’s production is commendably ambitious with some highly enjoyable, full-bloodied performances. Worth seeing. ★★★☆☆ Mike Whitton 30th March 2016
