PUBLIC SHARING: DICK FIDDLER IS DEAD
Etcetera Theatre
★★½
“its final scenes reveal emotional depth and humanistic concern that point to real potential”
Dick Fiddler Is Dead sets out to explore weighty themes of memory, identity, and spiritual alienation with commendable ambition. Yet despite flashes of Mediterranean warmth and absurdist humour, the production struggles to transform its conceptual scope into emotionally compelling theatre.
Julia Righton, as Jenny, opens the performance with warmth and ease, immediately drawing the audience into the story. The full house on opening night spoke to the anticipation surrounding the piece. Opposite her, Pravessh Rana’s Dick Fiddler—a man who believes himself spiritually dead after losing his job and identity—sits adrift on a park bench, both literally and existentially. The minimalist set amplifies this tension: she arrives armed with a suitcase full of Greek food and cryptic wisdom, while he embodies quiet despair.
At the heart of the play lies a potent conceit: Dick’s conviction that he is already dead. It carries rich dramatic potential, yet the writing, overly fixated on abstraction, rarely allows the audience to feel the human urgency beneath the philosophy. The text often reaches for profundity but lapses into stiff, overworked dialogue. The exchanges between Dick and Jenny sometimes resemble philosophical exercises rather than genuine conversation, weakening the emotional pulse of the piece.
Food—particularly the much-promised kleftiko—ought to serve as a sensual and symbolic bridge between memory, grief, and rebirth. Yet this potential remains underexplored. The dishes, though lovingly described, never fully materialise as vehicles for sensory or emotional revelation. Ironically, the moussaka, not the kleftiko, becomes the more visible prop, but even it feels symbolic only in name. As one line insists, “Love is the only ingredient,” the sentiment lingers beautifully—but the stage never quite tastes of it.
Comedic moments, such as the repeated jokes about the name “Dick,” raise occasional laughter but sit uneasily alongside the play’s existential ambitions. By contrast, a brief sequence of physical comedy involving dough-kneading delivers one of the show’s most engaging and tactile moments—a rare instance where humour, texture, and metaphor align.
The final ten minutes offer a welcome surge of emotional authenticity. As Jenny’s dementia symptoms surface and the dynamic between the two characters subtly reverses, the imagery of food and memory finally achieves genuine resonance. Righton’s performance deepens here, embodying both the personal and universal dimensions of caregiving. Rana, too, finds a more grounded emotional register in these closing scenes, revealing the humanity that the earlier text only hinted at.
Playwright and director Natasha Markou demonstrates conceptual intelligence and sensitivity, but the production would benefit from a clearer structural focus. In such an intimate setting, the text’s logic and staging precision face scrutiny. A stronger commitment to the play’s metaphorical undercurrents—especially its exploration of food as a vessel for memory—could elevate the work considerably.
At present, Dick Fiddler Is Dead feels closer to a promising rehearsal piece than a fully realised performance. Yet its final scenes reveal emotional depth and humanistic concern that point to real potential. With sharper writing, stronger narrative cohesion, and fuller use of its sensory motifs, this production could evolve into something truly affecting.
PUBLIC SHARING: DICK FIDDLER IS DEAD
Etcetera Theatre
Reviewed on 3rd November 2025
by Portia Yuran Li
Previously reviewed at this venue:
CHECKMATE | ★★★ | September 2025
HOSTAGE | ★★★★ | March 2024
DEAD SOULS | ★★½ | August 2023
FLAMENCO: ORIGENES | ★★★★ | August 2023
