By James Saunders
Brockley Jack Theatre
10th - 28th September 2013
Directed by Matthew Parker
Set Design Sara Polonghini
Lighting Design Phillip Jones
Photographs by Amir Aal
Zoe is dead. She can see the open casket her relatives are gathering around to mourn. But she can't remember why. As the family pursue the motions of the funeral rites and ceremony, guided by the ever appropriate Funeral Director, Mr Scrivens, Zoe has to pass through her own series of rites. Fortuitously, Scrivens is on hand to guide her too; the model of propriety and decorum both sides of the grave. Associates Fred and Sid, are also on hand to do the heavy lifting.
Mr Scrivens with Zoe, and Fred and Sid below
As the funeral service plays out behind her, Zoe relives all the key moments of her life, leading up to her choice to end it. There was her almost love-affair with her stepbrother Godfrey, and troubled relationships with her father, David, and Stepmother, Agnes, while Uncle Edgar and her Grndmother are caught in their own cobwebs of the past.
Godfrey
Agnes
David
Uncle Edgar and Grandmother
We chose to set James Saunders' play in the mid 1960s, the time when it was first performed. As the play jumps between many different times and places, and different levels of reality, the costumes were kept largely naturalistic, and to period. Mr Scrivens however, had a style which reflected a more Victorian presence, as did the Grandmother who had shrivelled to little more than a hand clutching her chair arm.
As Zoe begins to come to an acceptance with her terminal state, her presence becomes fainter, and the other characters more able to let her go. This was reflected in her costume, which lost its vibrancy in the second act, aiding her to fade gently away.
