Writer: Rea Dennhardt Patel
Director: Imy Wyatt Corner
What would you do if your body suddenly became much younger? The Undying tackles weighty questions with wit, curiosity and some unresolved tensions. Set within a migrant family, the play centres on Amba and Prav as they celebrate Prav’s 91st birthday. Amba’s gift, a bottle of pills that can restore the body to a younger age while erasing memories formed after that point, releases not only renewed energy but also desires and buried trauma.
The pill’s effects diverge sharply between the couple. For Prav, de-ageing intensifies his fear of losing authority in a world reshaped by feminism. He thus turns to the pill in an attempt to reclaim control. By contrast, Amba embraces the opportunity to pursue education and independence, finally subverting the constraints of her past. Through this contrast, the play examines gendered responses to ageing, migration and long-term emotional trauma.
Rea Dennhardt Patel’s writing is subtle and observant, and the structure is clear and well-paced: each shift in age signals a new phase in the couple’s relationship. However, the play’s two major thematic strands around this relationship, the feminist awakening and accumulated trauma, sometimes compete for attention. While both are important and interact with each other, their entanglement can blur the play’s central focus. With more space, these ideas might be allowed to unfold with greater clarity and balance.
The stage design supports the narrative effectively. The living-room setting is accompanied by framed digital screens showing textual descriptions of photographs, which fade as memories are erased. Live music, performed onstage by Ansuman Biswas with both traditional and contemporary instruments such as the tabla and handpan, underscores moments of physical and emotional transition. Interestingly, the musician functions not merely as accompaniment but as a witness within the world of the play.
Performing multiple ages within a 75-minute runtime is challenging, yet both actors, Vaishnavi Suryaprakash as Amba and Akaash Dev Shemar as Prav, convey the characters’ transformations with growing ease as the age gap narrows.
The Undying is an ambitious and thoughtful work with strong promise. With further work on how its thematic layers are revealed, it could mature into an even more powerful piece.
Runs until 10 February 2026
