Lorna Irvine finds much to love in this treat from A Play, a Pie and a Pint.
This is one play in which corpsing is a must- a spooktacular gem for anyone with even a slight taste for the macabre.
Paddy Cunneen's beautifully staged musical, with coffins and chemical bottles all over the set, puts the 'dead' in deadpan and isn't for the easily offended- focusing as it does on Jim McCaber (Jimmy Chisholm), an undertaker who has the ultimate in job satisfaction with a propensity towards talking and chuckling away to his corpses as he makes them up and embalms them, ready for their final send off.
Problem is, his latest for the off, Mr Hayes, a recently deceased man in sharp suit, has a tendency to talk and sing back, like a vintage crooner, brilliant songs like Noel Coward as co-written by Tim Minchin (before he sold his soul to Lloyd Weber), rhyming 'pride' with 'formaldehyde' and who acts like his conscience, pointing out the fact that his morbid foibles may be holding him back in life.
Worse is yet to come though, when hapless Jim pulls back the sheet of his latest 'client' to discover Margaret, once Young, now Grey, in both senses, the ex-love of his life. It is here the silliness turns to poignant backstory of the pair, inseparable for twelve years, before Margaret's affection thawed towards him. Once, it transpires, he was a promising musician until inheriting the family business and is not the happy chap he initially seemed to be.
Chisholm and Kate Donnelly as Margaret are wonderful together, from cheeky students to bitter adults, taking apart their fading relationship in flashback, only narrowly avoiding necromania, but it's Paul Cunningham's comic timing and louche moves as Hayes, and Cunneen's lyrically deft script referencing both Descartes and Madonna, which make this such a deliciously dark little lunchtime memento mori.
An adorable Halloween treat, from the hair on its head right down to the tag on its toes: after all, death has the last laugh- you may as well get in there first.
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