Breathing Corpses (Oberon Modern Plays)

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All this will be fitted in around actually seeing work performed, as Wade has not lost sight of why she started writing in the first place and why she moved east from Bristol to London: “There’s so much to see”, she says. “I go [to the theatre] three times a week and it is impossible to see everything, which is brilliant! If I don’t go at all during a week I feel rubbish. I don’t mean I feel guilty, I just feel funny in myself.” Everything’s dying, apparently. The weather – the planet as we know it. Apparently even Capitalism itself is dying! [Laughter.] Please! You wish! [Applause.] But Wade also points out that while both plays are suffused by death, they are actually about the art of living. Breathing Corpses takes its title from Sophocles' assertion: "When a man has lost all happiness, he's not alive. Call him a breathing corpse."

Kim Nelson plays Kate and Benjamin Sutherland plays her boyfriend Ben. Their lovemaking is rough and he has the bruises to prove it. She is tough, in control and goes too far. He is boyish and a bit aggressive and turns dangerous when he thinks she might have been mean to his dog. Finally Johnathan Sousa plays Charlie, a smooth-talking, charming guest in the hotel. He chats up Amy. Is he harmless? Is Amy? Director David Ferry always has us guessing. The Children also has two monologues for the other female character in the play, Hazel. Hazel is a retired mother of four; she practices yoga, she’s super-organised, and is the epitome of domestic efficiency. She lives on a farm with her husband, and has led an environmentally responsible life that she feels now warrants being a little selfish. Her monologue, early in the play, is about the decision she and Robin made to stay and fix up their property, and look after their animals, despite what she feels; that they had earnt the right to take the easier route just this one time. It begins “And then I had this amazing thought: we don’t have to. We don’t actually have to. To clear it up.” Where my body stops and the air around it starts has felt a little like this long continuous line of a battleground for about my whole life, I think. Last year was probably one of the finest in the life of young playwright Laura Wade; she achieved something many more experienced playwrights rarely do by having two new plays running simultaneously in London, Breathing Corpses at the Royal Court and Colder Than Here at Soho. This was all topped off by a Critics’ Circle Award and a Laurence Olivier Award nomination. Matthew Amer caught up with one of theatre’s hottest properties just days before the Laurence Olivier Award ceremony.

Bovell’s When the Rain Stops Falling is an intergenerational story about a family in Alice Springs, Australia. Our protagonist, Gabriel York is the grandson of Henry and Elizabeth Law, who we meet in London in 1959. Gabriel York’s father, Gabriel Law, has a strained relationship with his mother as a result of her refusal to shed light on the mysterious disappearance of his father when Gabriel Law was only seven years old. This monologue, which can be found towards the end of the play, sheds light on exactly what happened to make Gabriel Law’s father leave. In this monologue, after throwing a glass on wine in his face, Elizabeth confronts her husband, Henry, about a visit she received earlier that day from two policemen, and the accusations they made against Henry. She explains how she immediately defended him to the policemen, but then as she set about cleaning and painting their house, she makes a horrifying discovery. For most of the monologue, Elizabeth is using the metaphor of cleaning their neglected home to express the realisation she’s made about their neglected relationship and all the things she’s swept under the rug, until now. A powerful dramatic monologue, with a horrifying twist. At just 27, Wade has gone from the playwriting equivalent of 0 to 90 in what seems like seconds. She began writing full-time only a year ago. Having two premieres in one month is, she admits, exciting and scary, but at least it relieves her of the burden that faces all first-time playwrights: of following their debut with another corker. In fact, Wade has already delivered her third play, a commission for Soho Theatre. I am interested in the way advances in medicine and palliative care mean more people now have the opportunity to plan their own deaths, and also plan for those who are left behind," says Wade. "What does that do to the grieving process? Grief needs to be occupied, and organising the funeral was one way of doing that. As Myra's husband says at one point, 'The funeral isn't for you, it's for us.' But if you know someone is going to die, what do you do with the time that is left? You can't just all sit around being sad, missing them before they are actually dead and buried." 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. There is always a simmering sense of danger in David Ferry’s production. Amy the chambermaid who discovers the corpse covered in bed in the first scene has a quiet talk to herself, but you are just waiting for some surprise to happen.

The rest of the cast, too, give exceptional performances (which, I repeat, would have better fitted other surroundings, but let’s forget about that plaint for now). Helena Wilson’s Kate mauls boyfriends and household dogs. She is a hysterical and sarcastic woman with a perennially pissed off face. She swears naturally. Her partner, Ben, is played by the director, Dominic Applewhite, and he carries off the violent shifts in register well, by turns meek and murderous. Isobel Jesper Jones jabbers wonderfully as Elaine, marshalling an impressive array of tones and facial expressions – an ideal raconteuse. She is credibly despondent in the darker scenes. James Watson, as Elaine’s husband, Jim, contributes two shrewd portrayals, first of a thin-lipped bureaucrat, then of the same man traumatised. His sense of control is unassailable: he does not waste a wink. Calam Lynch as Ray is simple without being a caricature. Cassian Bilton plays a bumbling charmer, who turns out a psychopath. His look of manic fixation strikes the right note; Hugh Grant with a bloodlust for raw pigs’ entrails.

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In another scene, Jim is a manager of a storage facility and Elaine is his gently concerned wife. Jim has been haunted by something and while Elaine tries to remain cheerful, it’s hard going with Jim’s depression. Later another couple are also having difficulties but this time they are dangerously physical. Kate is trying to run her business but there are distractions from her boyfriend and his dog. Tempers flare. Danger in Ben’s behaviour is obvious. What will happen? In the last scene, Amy is cleaning up another hotel room and again sees a person under the covers. This turns out to be Charlie who is really good looking with a charming nature and a supposedly unusual job. There are five scenes in the play and through subtle, intricate writing some of the characters discover bodies and are haunted by it; some become the bodies themselves and perhaps in one case might be responsible for a body or two. The stories seem separate, but they are not. The beauty of Breathing Corpses is trying to solve the various mysteries as to who is under the covers and dead and who is not.

Breathing Corpses is a play by British playwright, Laura Wade, about the discovery of two separate corpses, and the characters tied to the events. In scene four, Elaine is talking to her husband, Jim, who has been going through a tough time after discovering one of these dead bodies in a crate. She enters this scene to find; ‘Jim sits cross-legged on the floor, carefully removing the crews from a brass door handle. Beside him, underneath a camping groundsheet, is a pile of doors.” Jim can’t move past the idea that the moment he opened the crate he cemented the dead woman’s fate: “Maybe in that second when I opened the box, maybe – Like if I hadn’t, maybe she’d have turned up at home a few days later”. And so, in response, Jim has resolved to take all of the doors off their hinges. Elaine, whose patience has completely dried up, is in this monologue trying to get Jim to snap out of it. He’s already ruined Christmas, no one can get through to him, and she thinks enough time has passed for him to be returning to normal.

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Wade is also true to her fellow young writers, preferring to take in some new writing of an evening rather than something that’s been about for a bit. Shakespeare is “quite long” she says. “I like to have some time left to go to the pub and discuss the play. I already know Shakespeare’s brilliant!” How would that very short conversation about the Bard go Miss Wade? “Masterpiece, wasn’t it? Pint?” Certainly in 2005, with Breathing Corpses, Wade is obviously an elegant, muscular and fearless writer. The title comes from Sophocles of all people: “When a man has lost all happiness, he’s not alive. Call him a breathing corpse.” The same can be said of women too. This will hardly be the only review to suggest that hot young playwright Laura Wade seems obsessed with death. Colder Than Here, which opened less than a month ago at Soho, dispassionately followed a dying woman's preparations for eternity. Breathing Corpses is an elusive tale that observes a gruesome cycle of linked deaths. We are told both everything and nothing. We are given all the clues which, when followed, lead us nowhere: I left the Keble O’Reilly with a satisfying sense of dissatisfaction.

The Story. Breathing Corpses has opened the Coal Mine’s third season. It’s a play full of mystery. One of the many mysteries here is that the characters are breathing and alive, but over the course of the play, some of them will not be. In Henrik Ibsen’s three-act drama about a widowed mother and the return of her prodigal son. In a monologue towards the end of act one, Helene Alving, forty-five, is revealing all the horrible things her husband did to her to the minister, Pastor Manders. When Pastor Manders suggests that by having ‘wayward ideas’ and denying her duties Helene had brought upon herself her dysfunctional relationship with her son, she decides that it is time to reveal the truth: the drinking, violence, and boastful infidelity of her husband created an environment so toxic for her son that she had no choice but to do what she did. The piece contains interjections by Manders that would have to be edited out, but with very few changes this would make a great monologue for a performer who is confident at playing with status, class and emotional vulnerability. Along the way, we learn yet more of the talented Miss Wade's philosophy of death. Her men are not yet well-rounded and they always seem to be victims but her voice is special. While it may not be heard twice every month going forwards, there can be no doubt that she has a rich future in store. Gather round, ladies! Here are some powerful and passionate monologues for women in the latter half of their lives (arguably, the best half!) These monologues are all from theatre, if you’re after a film monologue, you can head here, or a monologue from TV, head here. Enjoy! I mean I feel like. I feel like you’re letting this get in the way when it really- It’s a bit. I’m a bit- the doors and the talking rubbish about fish in your eyes and- I’m sorry it happened but I won’t take responsibility and you shouldn’t because we had nothing to do with it and we’re not people that kill people and we’re not-Oh, yes – it’s the end of days! But who exactly is complaining? The Chinese are investing in cloud seeding. Saudi Arabia is making a fortune out of drought-resistant crop technology. They’re growing food in dustbowls, and they’re making trillions in the process! If this is the apocalypse, I say bring it on! [Cheers] This dark play about confronting death introduces us to an array of fascinating characters: Amy, a hotel-cleaner, Jim and Elaine, and Ben and Kate, whose lives are linked by a series of morbid revelations. Written by the up-and-coming writer of Posh, Breathing Corpses is both a literary and a theatrical delight. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ The American premiere, produced by Luna Theater Company, at Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, Oct 2007 with the Chicago premiere being produced by Steep Theatre Jan 2008, directed by Robin Witt.