A Dead Body in Taos

Product Information

Or is this a story of financial manipulation in which Kath has been persuaded to leave all her millions to a “future life” company promising eternal, virtual existence?

Ti Green’s set is both mystical and technological: a huge wooden frame, like a doorway to another world, is outlined fluorescently; a pale background with shifting lines evokes the canvases of Agnes Martin, who built a cabin in Taos and who died there; she appears, still and meditative, as an inspirational force.

She is a frequent contributor to journals, magazines, and television documentaries on history, culture, sex, and feminism. In a Californian commune, Kath is learning how to let go of her anger at the world's injustices, and instead focus on her own spiritual journey. It dwells on the edges of possibilities, almost leaving the spectator to fill in the blanks while they are left to make sense of what this story is actually about. She is a cyborg, a product of 3D modelling and years of Kath recording facts about herself at the Future Life labs. For example, what could be an interesting exploration of character with Kath’s yearning to be back with her college boyfriend is thrown away in a plot device where she makes a cyborg of him.

He has arrived back to childhood home after many year’s estrangement to prepare his recently deceased father’s body for its journey to afterlife. A young woman is screaming, howling, and contorting her body with rage as an unfazed group of hippies looks on. Gemma Lawrence is a very watchable presence, particularly when she begins to thaw and engage with her mother’s posthumous identity. It sees a precocious young artist become part of the American student protest movement of the 1960s, fall in love, suffer tragedy and have a child with whom she has a tumultuous relationship. It transpires that her mother, Kath has been investing in new technology which allows her consciousness to function after death.David Burnett plays Leo, Kath’s love interest, a polo-neck wearing freedom fighter inspired by Kath’s ferocity. Still, Lawrence does good work as Sam, especially as we get hints of a thawing in her feelings and a suggestion that maybe she does feel a loss. While we can see from the flashbacks that Kath may not be the nicest person, it is a bit of a jump to the complete lack of a relationship with her daughter as she dies.

There are some brilliant ideas here, and powerful themes: bereavement, AI, student protest, vacuous advertising, corporate encroachment and mother- daughter conflict, but in the end the play never fully hangs together. As he dutifully washes and handles the limbs, he moves in and out of time contemplating key moments in his complicated interactions with his father, words and visuals bursting into life behind him, an overwhelming assault of stimuli, compounded by a bass-heavy soundtrack of traditional Hindi music.His tension between professionalism and his personal response to the case is subtly but powerfully enacted.

Ben and Max Ringham’s sound design ranges from ominous to exhilarating with ceremonial drumbeats and string sequences. If mother and daughter couldn’t resolve their differences in life, how can that be possible when one of them is dead? The treatment of her lovers and an angry reaction to a bizarrely out of place scene at a meditation commune all just make us like Kath less and less.Designer Ti Green fills the stage with an ingenious assemblage of screens that sit surprisingly naturally amid the crumbling splendour of Wilton's Music Hall.