Breathing Corpses (Oberon Modern Plays)

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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. I don’t care about the business, if you don’t want it anymore, fine, we’ll sell it I don’t care. But you’ll have to do something else. You can’t just stay at home taking the place apart with a screwdriver.

The last scene is also troublesome. Without giving too much away I will say that, although we are made to empathise with and understand the previous events that take place in the play, this last one comes across as a lazy way to end. A character is introduced supposedly to wrap the whole thing up, but because he is stereotypical and one-dimensional, he ends up doing nothing of the sort. This character stands out like a sore thumb, perhaps because the others are so well-crafted.A gripping play in five scenes that are connected in ever twisting mystery. It’s beautifully acted and directed. Everything’s dying, apparently. The weather – the planet as we know it. Apparently even Capitalism itself is dying! [Laughter.] Please! You wish! [Applause.] It is about people trying to live and deal with what life throws at them - the desperate fight for happiness," says Wade. "I've always been fascinated by those newspaper reports about people out walking the dog who discover a body in the bushes. For a short time they are at the heart of the story, and then what happened to the corpse becomes the focus and the person who found the body passes into obscurity. But they have to live every day with the knowledge of what they found. It's the idea that once you've lifted the lid and looked inside the box, what you've seen stays with you. You can't unsee what you have witnessed."

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. 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. 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] There are actually those – the enemy within – who would have us live in permanent terror and apprehension about common sense solutions we are proposing. [laughter and applause. Vika approaches her.] 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! 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.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." 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. Well, we’re not afraid of you! [cheers] To this home-grown enemy, to the faceless and so-called ‘cultural’ terrorists, this “Front”, these Turquoise militants, I say…up yours!! Verdict: Breathing Corpses is a unique experience for an audience member and the whole team must be applauded for their collaboration on this dark, multi-faceted, exciting production. Well, if you ask me, everyone’s feeling fine. If you ask me, everyone’s feeling better. (Pause.) . . . Everyone’s much calmer, don’t you think? … Men are so wedded to their gadgets . . . It belittles them … It takes away all their authority . . . A man needs to keep his hands free . . . if you ask me. Even an attaché case is enough to put me off. There was a man, once, I found really attractive, then I saw him with a square shoulder-bag, a man’s shoulder-bag, but that was it. There’s nothing worse than a shoulder bag. Although there’s also nothing worse than a cell phone. A man ought to give the impression that he’s alone . . . if you ask me. I mean, that he’s capable of being alone …! I also have a John Wayne-ish idea of virility. And what was it he had? A Colt .45. A device for creating a vacuum . . . A man who can’t give the impression that he’s a loner has no texture … So, Michael, are you happy? Is it somewhat fractured, our little … What was it you said? … I’ve forgotten the word, . . . but in the end . . . everyone’s feeling more or less all right . . . if you ask me.

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 limelight is not where Wade wants to be – she uses actors to occupy that particular space – but at the recent Critics’ Circle Award ceremony she was forced to hold the attention of an audience as she collected her award for Most Promising Playwright. “I was really nervous on the day,” Wade admits, “because I’m not an enormous fan of speaking.” The ‘in public’ aspect of this particular sentence is hastily added as an after-thought. The goings on will have you gripping your arm-rest trying to figure out where this is going and where it went. The playing space of the Coal Mine Theatre is and the audience is right there, almost in the middle of the action. The design team (Steve Lucas with his set and lighting and Ming Wong with the costumes) do wonders in creating the world of the play with economy. Breathing Corpses is not a play about the living coping with death. It is hardly about the living but rather, as the title suggests, the half-dead: the characters had a close encounter with a cadaver, and their minds are dropsical with thoughts of death. Do they cope? Most people do, but not they. They collapse with singular ease under the weight, wreaking more death on the way. Why do they fail with such gusto? It is not explained — the play is not concerned with naturalistic minutiae. There is barely any character development. There are no motives. The portraits do not swell. The circular plot – the cunning of it – promises an antiseptic game, not a brooding tragedy, more card castle than gothic cathedral. Cleverness, at least the kind the audience would detect too readily, does not sit well with drama so intellectually, again, the play is a vacuum. No deep thoughts here. At no point does Laura Wade, the author, commit herself to ideas or convictions. She fights shy of didacticism. Faced with death, she seems to tell us, there is nothing to say. It is ‘surreal’, as one character puts it.