The Lonesome Death of Eng Bunker – Omnibus Theatre, London

Writer: Tobi Poster-Su

Director: Iskandar Sharazuddin

The show blurb for Tobi Poster-Su’s The Lonesome Death of Eng Bunker describes the piece as a “gothic horror about the brutal cost of… being entirely alone in the universe”. The blend of puppetry, show-songs, stand-up, physical theatre, and burlesque certainly has some of gothic horror’s grotesquery and foreboding gloom. Alas, excellent puppetry and music aside, the resulting connotation is rather too camp to entirely fulfil its lofty ambitions.

North Carolina. January 1874. Siamese immigrant and freak show entertainer Eng Bunker wakes to learn his conjoined twin Chang is dead. “Then I am going”, Eng cautions his son, one of 21 children the seemingly priapic twins fathered. Poster-Su considers what Eng’s last hours must have been like, fully aware that he will not survive while still attached to the body of his brother. After 60 minutes of flamboyance, and one supposes intentional kitsch, the writer and performer concludes that he is “trying to figure something out” that defies understanding. Much the same could be said of watching the show itself.

Poster-Su tracks the twins’ journey from rural Thailand to America as travelling circus curiosities and thence to leisurely lives as wealthy Southern slaveholders. Late in life, Chang becomes an alcoholic, dead weight for brother Eng long before he dies. Aya Nakamura’s handsomely designed puppets, beautifully manipulated by Poster-Su, reveal a fascinating backstory story of abuse and assimilation. That the abused themselves become abusers, owners of 18 enslaved Africans, of whom 10 are under the age of seven, is dealt with head-on in the piece’s most reflective section.

At one point, the performer writhes in a dance of almost sexual intensity with a life-size mannequin of his brother, constructed of body parts suspended from the ceiling. Smaller puppets on what looks awfully like a dissecting table reveal the pair’s youth and events around their marriage to white, rural sisters Sarah and Adelaide. A dream sequence sees Chang’s body eviscerated, his entrails sniffed, prodded, and hung from butchers’ hooks.

Things get odder still in a series of Broadway-style show tunes that one suspects are inspired by Les Misérables. Perhaps these are designed to parody the twin’s lives as entertainers. “For sure, for sure, we backed the wrong side in the civil war”, Eng croons to the sound of twangy old-time Southern fiddle. Composer Tom Poster’s music is tremendous throughout, the lyrics less so.

Later, we get our hero as a fourth-wall-breaking stand-up comedian discussing the twin’s marriages: “Sarah got the wrong Eng of the bargain”, we hear. The coup de grace comes in the form of the final showstopper, a burlesque song and dance number featuring Poster-Su as a pink, tutu-clad cirrhotic liver. The show is a lot of fun, yes, but too camp to be enlightening about being entirely alone in the universe.

Runs until 21 September 2024