Being Dead (Don Quixote) | Review

Being Dead is fringe performance at its weirdest and most confronting. A show where nothing happens but the hour passes in a flash. Bonkers and at times, quite brilliant.

Deeply weird but frequently endearing this one-person monologue is a show about nothing at all but it steadily pulls you in to the point where theatre and reality are indistinguishable.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin – clad in sports bra and knickers – is by turn fidgety, coy, and utterly batty.

If you want to leave at any point, that’s ok, they say demurely, not a great opening gambit, and taken up eventually by 2 of the 14 attendees.

There’s a talking hat named Sancho in a loose nod in a loose nod to Cervantes Don Quixote (as highbrow as it got) and, at a low point, we’re all corralled on stage to watch a lap top video of a horse prancing around a field.

missing… young woman who politely declined, but no affront was taken or given. It wasn’t that sort of show.

Later they spent several minutes curled up under a pink dress, only an occasional arm and leg poke indicating they were still with us.

There were a few gigglers in the audience plus a Mr Bean lookalike, tweed jacket, briefcase  – who swapped seats intermittently before scarpering at the precise moment  full frontal nudity finally hit. Part of the show?

Raw, pure, experimental and probably what the fringe should really be.