Review: Question No One, The Space @ Venue 45 (Venue 45)

DEATH has committed suicide, and his three executors are busy preparing his funeral.

* * *

Meanwhile, a terminally ill young woman called Robin is getting ready to say goodbye to her friends and family, and particularly her partner, Jess.

There’s a delicious tension between the two interweaving narrative strands that make up this 50-minute drama from Blue Dragonfly Productions. The scenes concerning the last will and testament of Mr G Reaper (OBE) play out like an episode of Acorn Antiques set in a morgue, with Steph Green, Rose Hardy and Johanna Clarke doing brilliant deadpan work as the three paper-pushers struggling to get the deceased’s affairs in order. By contrast, Robin and Jess’s lingering farewell is played straight by Hannah Genesius and Sarah Weston, and each time the action lurches from the farcical to the tragic (or back again) a little frisson of nervous energy crackles around the theatre.

If only Robin’s journey from fear to acceptance was fleshed out in more detail, her unexpected tragedy, when it comes, would pack even more of an emotional punch.

Until 25 August. Today 10:10pm.