Analogue: Step into the abyss

Published on Saturday 8 August 2009 16:44

WHEN five-year-old Samuel Puttick died of meningitis at the end of May, his parents, Neil and Kazumi, were distraught. It is impossible to measure the extent of their grief, but their actions say it all. The evidence suggests they drove their camper van 140 miles to the chalk cliffs of East Sussex, then put Samuel's body in one rucksack and his favourite toys in another before leaping together to their deaths 120 metres below.

Sadly, it was only the latest in a long history of suicides at Beachy Head, which would be best known as a beauty spot were it not for its grim reputation as one of Britain's most popular places to die. With the highest chalk sea cliffs in Britain – reaching 530ft – the area is the site of up to 20 suicides every year, a pattern that the Eastbourne Parish Register can trace back to 1600.

None of which sounds like obvious material for a Fringe show, but that hasn't stopped the imaginative young company Analogue from taking it on. Having caused a small stir in 2007 with Mile End – which was inspired by a similarly morbid event on the London Underground when a passenger was pushed under a train by someone who was mentally ill – the company is working its way through a trilogy of death-related plays. "Although death is at the centre of all of the plays, it really is about life," says co-director Liam Jarvis. "It's about the people left behind, how they cope and how they get some understanding."

Where the Fringe First-winning Mile End was about a murder, Beachy Head is about suicide and the as-yet-untitled third instalment will be about an accidental death. As Jarvis sees it, death is a tremendously dramatic event that triggers a fascinating range of responses from the culprits and those left behind. "In Mile End lots of people responded to the death in different ways and it's the same with someone taking their own life," he says. "Is it a selfish thing to do? Is it an honest thing to do? It's the questions that we're interested in."

Beachy Head tells the story of a woman whose husband has committed suicide and of a pair of documentary makers who inadvertently film a man as he falls to his death. While the woman tries to make sense of her loss, the filmmakers have the ethical dilemma of whether to show their provocative images or to deny the appetite of a ghoulish public. "It's about the people the dead man leaves behind and the journey they go on," says Jarvis. "It's about the questions that remain unanswered, that perhaps you'll never find an answer to."

Despite the sensational subject matter, Analogue couldn't be accused of flippancy. The company takes its research seriously – so seriously it delayed its planned visit to Edinburgh last year to allow time to explore the issue more fully. Long before rehearsals began, Jarvis and his colleagues had been out and about talking to pathologists, volunteers, Samaritans and people who had made suicide attempts. On their first field trip to the area when they saw the police and chaplaincy team comforting the grieving relatives of Melanie Wells, who had jumped from the cliffs after battling with depression, leaving behind her husband, the former Sussex cricketer Alan Wells, and two sons.

With an issue as sensitive as suicide, they are anxious not to cause offence. "It's a huge responsibility and that's why we have spent so long working on it," says Jarvis. "We've spent hours leafing through media guidelines on representing suicides because it's important to get it right. It's not something you go into lightly."

Such an earnest approach could, of course, produce an overly pious piece of theatre, but Analogue's collaborative working method, involving three playwrights – Dan Rebellato, Emma Jowett and Lewis Hetherington – and the creative contributions of actors, designers and musicians, is intended to stretch the imaginative possibilities of the stage. "It's a shame we don't make documentary theatre because we could put on stage everything that we've found," says Jarvis. "The facts provide the starting point and then we improvise around those facts. The characters aren't real but are based on lots of case studies. The most difficult part of the process is transferring the research, which is rooted in reality, into a grand narrative."

Beachy Head, Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, 8-30 August, www.edinburgh-festivals.com