Writer: Edmund Morris
Director: Ben Woodhall
Shaun and Rob are undertakers as well as something of an odd couple; while Rob is a superstitious Irish Catholic and therefore respectful of the cadavers that fill their day-to-day work, Shaun is brisk to a fault as he labours under the legacy of his father, the former owner and proprietor of their East End London funeral parlour (wonderfully designed by Ali Day). It’s a fun setup filled with quick banter despite the morbid setting, but things quickly take a sinister turn when a certain corpse (Harry Carter) is brought to the parlour with a dark history of its own.
As you might have inferred, there’s a stab taken here at that rare and difficult mix of horror/comedy. Shaun (Edmund Morris, also writer) and Rob (Louis Davison) are funny characters in dark circumstances that for a good chunk of the runtime feel suitably weighty, and at the start it really is a laugh a minute; Morris has comedy down to a fine art, both in his writing and performance and Davison is a great match beside him (even if his Irish accent can slip at times), while Carter rounds things out perfectly once he comes to dominate the stage.
It’s the opposite side of the coin where things are a bit lacking. While the many laughs of the opening half of the play are complemented by the buildup of a foreboding atmosphere, the second half maintains this general spirit of levity while failing to deliver on that same darkness. Revelations occur, murderers are unmasked, but these feel impromptu and with little more than threadbare support from what came before. The script is quick to make room for jokes and punchlines, but can fail to ground its world and characters at vital moments, perhaps because so much priority has been given to generating laughs.
This lack of grounding is particularly true of the ending, which feels quite rushed. Far too much happens, again without much support, and although the pacing benefits from the energy these twists provide, much of it feels arbitrary and hollow, action for the sake of action. Special mention here to the needless 15-minute interval, which occurs barely 30 minutes into the runtime and only disrupts the flow of what was otherwise a fast-paced one-hour show.
But for all these faults, it bears reiterating that the humour and all-around production, really, is top-notch. The first half is a comedy masterclass, and while the second half has its stumbles, it never stops being a good time thanks to a general sense of momentum and some quite engaging performances. Once it figures out a better ending, the show’s a surefire winner.
Runs until 6 December 2025
