After Party – Traverse Theatre
Imagine inviting the family round for your 80th birthday, pouring the drinks, cutting the cake and then announcing that you intend to be dead tomorrow.
That is the grenade Vivienne Blackwood throws into the celebrations in Morna Young’s After Party. A celebrated former actress, Vivienne has terminal cancer and has decided that she will determine the manner and timing of her own death. She wants her fractured family around her when she does it.
You could hardly ask for a more combustible theatrical premise. What is surprising is how rarely After Party allows it to explode.
This Traverse Theatre production, in association with Paines Plough and the Belgrade Theatre and directed by Katie Posner, initially treats the gathering remarkably broadly. The first half freq...