Music: Robert Tripolino
Book and Lyrics: Sam Hooper
Director: Gabrielle Scawthorn
Death is not some cloaked figure with a scythe in Robert Tripolino and Sam Hooper’s musical fantasia Death Suits You. Rather, he is a socially awkward artisan, carefully crafting unique methods of demise and who chooses to share some of his favourites with us, his invited audience.
Hooper plays Death as someone eternally frustrated with a lack of appreciation for his craft. At funerals, he opines, his name rarely even gets a mention. And so his tales – dispatches of his despatches, if you will – are his chance to gain some recognition finally.
Hooper’s script contains a large amount of wry humour, often derived from his delight at professionalism counterbalancing the macabre and sometimes gory methods of people’s demise. There are not many shows where the starving to death of a young girl, or a bullet to the head dispensed by a spurned lover, could sit comfortably alongside quips about the administrative headaches caused by his subjects’ free will.
Each of Death’s subjects gets their own slice of performance, be that song, dance or poetry. The mix lessens the piece’s repetitive nature, which otherwise becomes a sequence of story, performance piece, story, and so on. Hooper’s dance skills come in handy for interpreting a drowning man or the devastation of a multi-car pile-up, while the songs are sweetly delivered with an appropriate sense of poignancy.
Since last seen at the Camden Fringe in 2019, Death Suits You has inevitably acquired a few new references to pandemic viruses, but otherwise delivers the same mix of wit and gruesomeness. And despite the subject matter, most of it is surprisingly tasteful – although Death’s frustration when a high school shooting goes “wrong” certainly comes closest to crossing the line.
A piece comprised of individual, separate stories is always going to struggle to find a natural conclusion or, indeed, an overarching arc to Hooper’s character. Its series of portraits fill the hour, and then Death takes his leave. While not outstaying his welcome, the somewhat perfunctory end does highlight the limitations of the show’s format.
But the time we do spend in his company signals that this version of Death, and his personification in the form of Sam Hooper, are welcome companions for a macabre hour.
Runs until 10 February
The Reviews Hub Score
Humorously macabre
