What's On

Who can forget their first love? Obsessive, all-consuming and knotted together forever (or so you think). Honest, unflinching, complex and giddy teenage love mixed with secrets and an unexpected reunion are explored in the Australian premiere of UK production Post Mortem.

Nancy (Essie Barrow) and Alex (award-winning playwright Iskandar R. Sharazuddin) met in biology class dissecting a pig heart. They shared secrets, comic books and classic Dido songs. They believed their love was eternal. Until it wasn't. Now, reunited ten years later at a mutual friends' wedding, another dissection begins. Nancy and Alex are forced to confront the myths and mismatching memories of their short-lived relationship... to unpack what really happened when their lives shattered all those years before. Who hurt who, and who is holding on too tightly to that trauma?

Post-Mortem is a candid and comedic look at the joy of young love, its fragments, the damage that outlives it, and the lies we tell ourselves when it all ends.

As part of the Summer Nights program for Fringe World 2020, it will be making its debut at Perth's The Blue Room Theatre on Friday 24th & Saturday 25th January at 6:30pm, and Tuesday 28th January - Saturday 1st February at 8pm.

Iskandar R. Sharazuddin turns the typical two-hander on its head with the show's intimate fusion of dance, physical theatre and gripping new writing. "Post-Mortem is a play, that for the most part, is about how we mythologise our own past, and asks what it means when someone else has a conflicting mythology? Both these ex-lovers have their own narrative why that relationship ended and are forced to confront their mismatching ideas of what happened," Sharazuddin said.

Emotionally complex and instantly recognisable characters wrought through sharp writing, combine with strong onstage chemistry, evocative movement sequences and nuanced set, sound and lighting design. Post Mortem takes us deep into the hearts and heads of its protagonists, unearthing a lot about them - and maybe even ourselves - along the way...