Mourning Becomes Laughter: Dead Prepared at WSAF 

The author Roddy Doyle has a quote about funerals that I think always rings true: “Did you ever laugh at a funeral? Of course I laughed at a funeral. Did you ever not laugh at a wedding? Yeah, it’s so fucking boring. I’d much rather be at a funeral. Much more spontaneity.” In Dead Prepared, the new short two hander by Maddie Atkinson and Charlie Muskett, that kind of spontaneity is king. The notion of two unemployed theatre grads (Charlie and Maddie) becoming a mortician double act (Eulogene and Wake) is inspired and could easily be a two act play or even a TV pilot. It’s the play’s sparsity mixed with a spontaneity, that makes the show so entertaining and moving. Accompanied by an often shafted piano player (Charlie Spence) the duo try to reconcile with death. Maddie’s is achingly intimate and personal. Charlie’s is detached and social, with guilt to how he responded. Though the show moves around one real loss, the language around death is so open and honest that it becomes universal. The show has an expert comedic economy, where no joke is wasted and everything get it’s own resolution.  The slapstick undertakers with their music hall routine switch on a beat to real-life voice messages. Asking a constant question: When can you laugh with your dead?  

Though the show moves around one real loss, the language around death is so open and honest that it becomes universal. 

Dead Prepared’s images are classic and steeped within theatrical tradition. Hats being put on and off. Sketches breaking the show up. There is nothing morbid, nothing dourer about the play’s depiction of grief.  They stratal between Dick and Dom and Vladimir and Estragon. Eulogene’s cringe and comedy is always bookend by Wake’s sudden realisations. Pushing the existential to the edge, the actors lives and the play seep into one and another. Yet, by the succinct end, there is no push to either one theme or another, rather a tender synthesis. For Eulogene and Wake, Charlie and Maddie, it’s the beginning of a beautiful self-awareness.  To face your dead at last is a tough yet inevitable part of life. I’ll never forget when, at their sister’s harrowing funeral, my two grand uncles chatted to each other throughout the entire service. If there is a moral to be taken from this tongue in cheek and touching play it’s that you’ll never forget the ones you lost, so keep plodding along. 

Dead Prepared is coming next to the Edinburgh Fringe. The show will be playing The Aurora in Lauriston Halls from 26th-30th August. 

★★★★★