Die! Die! Die! Old People Die!
This performance has taken place in the past
In the award-winning ‘Die! Die! Die! Old People Die!’, comedy duo Ridiculusmus – UK theatre’s most enduring double act – play Violet, Norman and Arthur, three crustaceous centenarians who move at the pace of turtles mating and discharge their bodily gases into conveniently placed receptacles. As this hopelessly endearing trio shuffle with relentless positivity through a slow-mo ballet punctured by fond fumbling and the manic popping of their pills, they attempt to navigate the murky memories of a ménage à trois, lumbering from drawing-room farce to the tragi-comedy of death and the inevitable bleak landscape of loss.
Like all Ridiculusmus works it’s a conflation of painstaking research and lived experience, liberated by the apparatus of comedy and imagination. Informed by close relationships with inspirational elders and the study of ancient mourning rituals, it began its life with acclaimed seasons in Melbourne, London and Edinburgh, where it was selected as part of the 2019 British Council Showcase, received the Herald Archangel Award and was described as:
‘Dangerously funny, scatological, surreal, clever and ultimately powerfully humane.’ Mark Brown, Sunday Herald
‘Somewhere between Beckett and Monty Python in tone and style, with echoes of the greatest clowns of the 20th century, Die! Die! Die! Old People Die! is an exemplary reminder that the highest accolades we give to comedy are couched in the language of pain. Bloody Magisterial.’ **** The Sydney Morning Herald
Written & directed by JON HAYNES & DAVID WOODS
Sound Design by MARCO CHER-GIBARD
Lighting Design by RICHARD VABRE
Set & Costume Design by ROMANIE HARPER
Movement Consultant THOMAS BRADLEY
Researcher PHELINE THIERENS
Elderhood Consultant AILSA RICHARDSON
Development Contributors/Perfoers: RENEE LIM, CLANCY, ONION, PATRIZIA PAOLINI, JACOB WILLIAMS, PHELINE THIERENS, AREND TJEPKEMA, ARTHUR BOLKAS, MINSUN PARK, RUPERT JONES, JANIE BOOTH and RICHARD TALBOT
Supported by the Arts Council of England
Image credit: David Woods
