Tag Archives: Danny Scheinmann

WHEN YOU PASS OVER MY TOMB

★★★★★

Arcola Theatre

WHEN YOU PASS OVER MY TOMB at the Arcola Theatre

★★★★★

“Challenging, stimulating, playful, thrilling, but above all, it defies categorisation.”

At curtain call, Al Nedjari, the actor playing the writer of “When You Walk Over My Tomb” announces that there is somebody in the audience ‘pretending to be me’. He invites the real-life Sergio Blanco onstage. We are almost convinced it is this way round, such is the blurring of truth and fiction. We have forgotten by now that Nedjari isn’t, in fact, Blanco, and that Charlie MacGechan and Danny Scheinmann are not their onstage characters too. The acting is so natural and quasi-improvised that we have been utterly drawn into the surreal, stark, seductive fiction.

Two hours earlier, the trio emerge from within the audience and introduce themselves as ghosts, recounting how they each died, before slipping into their characters for the main narrative. “When You Walk Over My Tomb” recounts the author’s last days having decided to arrange his own assisted suicide in a Swiss clinic run by Dr. Godwin (Scheinmann). He has resolved to donate his body to a convicted necrophiliac, Khaled (MacGechan), interned in the Bethlem psychiatric hospital in London (“what difference is there between donating my body to science and donating it to someone who might find pleasure in it when I’m dead”). The play unfolds, alternating between the playwright’s encounters with the doctor and the young man who is lustfully preparing to receive his corpse after his death. We lose count of the taboos that are broken as we try to keep up with the uncomfortable yet dizzyingly fascinating and often beautiful prose. There are several references to Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ and, indeed, this play is its own chimera – a monster compounded of incongruous parts. Simultaneously tragic and hopeful. A love letter to life but lusting for death. It even has its own epitaph rather than an epilogue.

“the acting skills of Nedjari, MacGechan and Scheinmann alchemise the complex material into gorgeous bitesize pieces of entertainment that highlight every line of the brilliant material”

“When You Walk Over My Tomb” follows the success of Blanco’s OFFIE award winning ‘Thebes Land’ and ‘The Rage of Narcissus’ at the Arcola Theatre. One of the world’s most performed living Spanish-language writers, his current work is brilliantly adapted and directed by Daniel Goldman who has teased out the themes of death, eroticism, passion, desire, mortality and the afterlife with a surgeon’s skill while still dressing the harrowing subject matter in swathes of humour. Cultural references are thrown in left right and centre from Shakespeare to the Brothers Grimm, Byron, Shelly, Flaubert, Bach, Lennon. Religious iconography becomes pornography, while a drowned child’s discarded Playmobil toy adopts the same potent symbolism of Yorick’s skull.

It is as though the concept of the play within a play is being reflected from parallel mirrors and stretched to infinity. But the acting skills of Nedjari, MacGechan and Scheinmann alchemise the complex material into gorgeous bitesize pieces of entertainment that highlight every line of the brilliant material. Blanco takes time out to explain certain matters, such as the subtle differences between euthanasia and assisted suicide. The doctor recounts some cases (real life or fictional we’re never quite sure) of necrophilia. But it is never expositional. The cast involve the audience at times, or address the tech box, giving cues to the operator – but it is never contrived. The actors blur their real selves with their on-stage personas, but we never lose sight of the distinction. It has been dubbed autofiction and, although the audience doesn’t question it, the actors often wryly step out of character, interrupting the action to ask what aspects of this show are actually real.

Challenging, stimulating, playful, thrilling, but above all, it defies categorisation. One can describe the patterns of a kaleidoscope, but it is only when you hold it up to the eye that you grasp the true beauty. “When You Walk Over My Tomb” is one of those pieces of theatre that has to be seen to be believed. Original, perverse, intoxicating. Funny and sad; it will make you look at life another way. And death. And what lies between and possibly after. A must-see triumph. I bet you’re dying to see it!

 

WHEN YOU PASS OVER MY TOMB at the Arcola Theatre

Reviewed on 12th February 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Alex Brenner

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

SPUTNIK SWEETHEART | ★★★ | October 2023
GENTLEMEN | ★★★★ | October 2023
THE BRIEF LIFE & MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF BORIS III, KING OF BULGARIA | ★★★★★ | September 2023
THE WETSUITMAN | ★★★ | August 2023
UNION | ★★★ | July 2023
DUCK | ★★★★ | June 2023
POSSESSION | ★★★★★ | June 2023
UNDER THE BLACK ROCK | ★★★ | March 2023
THE MISTAKE | ★★★★ | January 2023
THE POLTERGEIST | ★★½ | October 2022
THE APOLOGY | ★★★★ | September 2022
L’INCORONAZIONE DI POPPEA | ★★★★ | July 2022

WHEN YOU PASS OVER MY TOMB

WHEN YOU PASS OVER MY TOMB

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Review of Joy – 5 Stars

Joy

Joy

Gerry’s Studio, Theatre Royal Stratford East

Reviewed – 26th October 2017

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

 

“a play that is unique and important yet totally unpretentious”

 

Performed by a cast of seven, some of whom identify as having learning disabilities, Joy is a tale of the struggle for independence and the difficulty of letting go. It is about family and friendship and allowing people to just be who they are. Stephanie Martin’s script is beautifully crafted, unsentimental and real and there are some genuinely hilarious moments, one of which involves a banana. There is no tokenism here, no sense of inequality among the cast. Each and every one of the actors delivers, weaving a story that centres on one young woman’s desire to have the life she wants.

Imogen Roberts is a delight as Joy and it is a rare thing to see a person with learning disabilities presented as a fully rounded character who falls in love, is loved in return, makes friendships independently, gets drunk with her sister and stands up for what she wants. Her sister, Mary, is played by Rachel Bright, best known for playing Poppy Meadow in Eastenders. Mary loves spending time with Joy and wants her to be able to grow up and build a life for herself. But even while hanging out in the bedroom talking about boys, dancing like crazy and slugging beer, she is the responsible sister who has cared for Joy since their mother left them years ago. The two are a fantastically fun and well matched pair and the affection between them is palpable.

Danny Scheinmann plays John, the girls’ father. He is terrified of anything happening to Joy. He wants her to be safe and doesn’t like her having a relationship with Paul, played by Deen Hallisey. He also disapproves of Joy’s new friendship with Sue, played by Kate Lynn Evans, a librarian who is trapped in a cold marriage. We see Joy listening to Sue’s problems, helping the much older woman and generally enjoying her company. It is an unlikely friendship, but it works. Paul is a spoken word artist, a gentle young man, but will Joy’s father allow the relationship to continue? Scheinmann, Evans and Hallisey represent different poles in Joy’s life, Scheinmann’s frightened anger, Evan’s wonderful neuroticism and Hallisey’s quiet passion are the background to her optimism and determination and allow her to demonstrate different types of love and caring. It’s all beautifully done.

Running parallel to this contemporary tale is the story of two young sisters from the Victorian age. Joy is reading about a young woman from 1871, and sees her in her daydreams. Mabel is like Joy and her sister Maud is the equivalent of Mary, a young woman who loves her sister deeply and wants the best for her. They walk for days to get to an enlightened hospital where ‘people like Mabel’ are cared for with kindness. Maud’s care for her sister and her determination are sensitively portrayed by E J Martin and Mabel’s strength of character, occasional stubbornness and love for her sister are brought vividly to life by Stephanie Newman. After the show I found myself wondering what the rehearsal process had been like for the two pairs of sisters. The onstage relationships were strong and nuanced, there was a sense of real delight in each other’s company and genuine mutuality.

Carla Goodman’s production design is simple and effective. Chalk drawings on the back wall are completed by the cast to indicate changes of location, something I had not seen before and which works beautifully. Melanie Fullbrook directs with sensitivity and a lovely comic touch, weaving the story in a way that never jars and where both time periods co-exist with ease.

I don’t want to give away too much of the story, but there were tears in the audience at the end. Happy tears. If you want to see a play that is unique and important yet totally unpretentious, a play that will move you and make you laugh out loud, go and see this.

 

Reviewed by Reviewed by Katre

Photography by Mathew Foster

 

 

 

JOY

is at Gerry’s Studio, Theatre Royal Stratford East until 4th November

 

 

Gerry's TRSE

 

 

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