Fun things come in small boxes and funny things can happen at funerals—short but punchy show Dead Named is a case in both points.
UK-based American writer Dian Cathal’s character in this solo show is a transgender man who hasn’t yet given himself a name but knows that the old one has had its time. Picking up on the recurring inferences to loss in mainstream language around gender transitioning, a funeral seems in order to lay Lilly to rest.
But Cathal is an award winning comedian as well as a writer and actor and the text is as comic as the delivery which slickly incorporates some impro and bants with the audience.
Harnessing an Irish Catholic upbringing, Cathal uses stories from Celtic mythology to raise issues about parental expectations of children, and in a pithy passage on the giving of names and giving of life, the material feels goose-bumpingly personal and heartfelt. At other times, tears were shed.
But there is no chance for this dark stuff to drag you down, because Cathal is generous with his one-liners and sidelong looks, and his penchant for the melodramatic includes the coffin that sits centre-stage and thunder cracks and lightning flashes of Hammer House proportions.
Skewing the structure, Cathal appears to step out of character for a eulogy-centred epilogue, but there are barely any discernible differences between Cathal and his protagonist or in the quality of the monologue which continues to be comically sharp-witted. Cathal really knows how to put the fun in funeral.
Dead Named is part of SE Fest, a new festival based in south east London to promote and celebrate new writing co-hosted by two award-winning theatres, The Bridge House Theatre in Penge and The Jack Studio Theatre in Crofton Park. SE Fest 2024 runs until 14 September.