Breathing Corpses (Oberon Modern Plays)

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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?” 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.

A gripping play in five scenes that are connected in ever twisting mystery. It’s beautifully acted and directed. 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. The smart people are thriving. The smart people see business opportunity in what’s happening to our planet. We have gathered here to solve the world’s problems, and we all know the solution is Fossil Fuels! [Loud cheers.] 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. 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."

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After its initial premiere it has since been produced in Sydney 2006, The Hague 2007 and most recently Melbourne 2016. [4] The British regional premiere was at Alma Tavern Theatre, Bristol 2007 presented by Plain Clothes Theatre Productions. It subsequently toured to the Cheltenham Everyman Studio. The production won Venue magazine's Best Play of 2007.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. For two days this month, Laura Wade will enjoy a unique double. She will have her first and second plays running simultaneously at two of Britain's leading new-writing venues. As her debut, Colder Than Here, draws to a close at the Soho Theatre in London, her second, Breathing Corpses, will just begin its season at the Royal Court. "It is," says Wade, "a bit like having Christmas happen twice over." The scene with Kate and her boyfriend, Ben, was excellently portrayed. It was easy to relate to the dialogue and her anger with her boyfriend’s seemingly endless passivity. It transpires that Kate, too, has found a body, but, rather than it traumatising her, it merely annoys her that she has to devote so much time to helping the police. The dialogue is particularly excellent in this scene. 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. 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.