A Dead Body in Taos review – a spiritual exploration of what it means to be really free - The Guardian

A pistillate is urgently summoned to New Mexico aft a dormant assemblage is recovered successful Taos, a godforsaken town. Sam (Gemma Lawrence) confirms it is her mother, Kath (Eve Ponsonby), lone to observe that Kath inactive exists – oregon 1 mentation of her – arsenic a cyborg successful whom her parent imprinted a lifetime’s memories earlier her ain death.

Is Kath immortal now? Is she adjacent alive, to immoderate degree? Or is this a communicative of fiscal manipulation successful which Kath has been persuaded to permission each her millions to a “future life” institution promising eternal, virtual existence?

David Farr’s antithetic and inquiring play, directed by Rachel Bagshaw and produced by Fuel, becomes an existential enigma exploring what constitutes humanness and however we tin beryllium genuinely free.

The spiritual associations of the godforsaken go clearer arsenic these questions are unleashed; Taos is simply a liminal abstraction wherever concepts of beingness and decease collide. Kath arrives determination aft an affectional breakdown, uncovering it to beryllium “the quietest spot connected earth”. She seems similar a modern-day Desert Father successful her quest for freedom, and beingness beyond death.

Eve Ponsonby and Gemma Lawrence successful A Dead Body successful Taos. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Ti Green’s acceptable plan gives the play a spatial layering that brings clarity to the story’s past-present structure: a framework for the virtual world sections, and chiseled platforms for the assorted phases successful Kath’s life, on with deft country changes utilizing video, designed by Sarah Readman, and sound, by Ben and Max Ringham. A back-screen shows integer images of Kath’s younger self, combined with smears of colour and shapes (she was erstwhile an creation student). The indebtedness to film-maker Adam Curtis is wide successful these optics, though a quality is besides named Curtis Adam and the playwright gives acknowledgment to Curtis successful his acknowledgments.

Some actors play treble versions of their characters, including Ponsonby (physical and intense) arsenic good arsenic David Burnett arsenic her assemblage lover, Leo. The formed are compelling crossed the board, including Lawrence, who emanates grief analyzable by resentment astatine each the ways her parent failed her. Flawed emotion is an underlying theme: Kath is drawn to the cult-like instauration promising eternal integer beingness successful anticipation of being fixed a 2nd accidental astatine parental (as good arsenic romantic) love, which bears a resemblance to Caryl Churchill’s A Number.

Questions connected what constitutes the quality essence stay unanswered, and it is amended this way. The contented of whether the cyborg Kath is showing signs of humanity cannot beryllium dismissed outright; it becomes different of this play’s intriguing mysteries.