Anna Burnside reviews a production of a new play that's 'tight and well-constructed with great banter'.
What’s worse: chemo or sambuca? These are the type of questions up for discussion in The Funeral Club, based on the teenage cancer ward where writer and performer Eimi Quinn spent a chunk of her own formative years.
This club runs on inky black humour and dubious personal jokes, as kids whose brains are not fully developed grapple with the stickiest issues of life and death.
Emma is sweating through early menopause. Camp Callum has been discharged (minus a testicle) but still wants to hang with the cancer cool kids. Jade is struggling on a crutch, with a stoma bag.
Together, they plan a diamond heist to pay off the credit card debt Emma ran up when she thought she had months to live and teach Jade’s neglectful jeweller father a lesson.
Part crime caper, part genuine tearjerker, the robbery is just an excuse for a road trip. There’s a stop off at a dogging site, a free fill-up at the petrol station and an emotional session of shouting therapy on top of a hill.
Director Maureen Carr, a hugely accomplished comic actor and physical performer, gets the best out of the young cast and helps them walk the line between manic and maudlin.
Kyle Gardiner is adorable as bouncy Callum, obsessed with Barbra Streisand and musical theatre. Caroline McKeown is hugely poignant as Jade, the lonely kid who finally found her family in the cancer ward. Eimi Quinn is outstanding as Emma, the mouthy badass struggling with survivor guilt and a terrible hangover at the same time.
The Funeral Club, Quinn’s first performed play, is tight and well-constructed with great banter. There are a lot of big emotions in this neat little package. What a great way to use a terrible experience and memorialise the friends Quinn lost along the way.
The Funeral Club performs at Oran Mor’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint until June 8, 2024.
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Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
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