Melbourne Reviews

In 2016 Cory Taylor’s final book Dying: A Memoir was rushed to press by the publisher. Shortly afterwards, Taylor died, from melanoma-related cancer, but not before launching the memoir via Skype at Avid Reader, the Brisbane bookshop where Benjamin Law was working at the time. They were friends. After her death, Taylor’s mission to break the silence surrounding death and dying was taken up by Law, who was commissioned by the Melbourne Theatre Company to adapt the work for the stage.

The book was a surprise hit world-wide. Now the stage version has its own surprises in store. This one-woman show is performed by actor/comedian Genevieve Morris, who takes Law’s pared-down script and translates it into a gutsy, hilarious and at times poignant embodiment of Taylor’s more elegant narrative style. Morris has had her own brushes with death. She has been treated for two bouts of cancer that no doubt gives an edge to her performance. There is a sense that she wants control over her death as well as her life, just as Taylor did.

New scenes are added, not just for comic effect, but to highlight the disempowerment of the dying person. An all-too-familiar psychologist harps on about mindfulness; two ‘experts’ discuss Taylor’s prognosis, while the patient sits wriggling in her chair, unable to get a word in edgewise. In these professional encounters, the word ‘death’ is never mentioned.

Other scenes are taken straight from the book. The conversations between the author and her siblings translate well to the stage, where Morris uses distinct voices and body language to convey each character. A fleet of chairs is constantly rearranged on the stage to accommodate the cast of invisible characters, as well as suggest a change of scene. The lighting and sound, down to the exact location of a ringing mobile, are dramatic and perfectly executed, apart from the unnecessary and annoying use of theatrical smoke.

A large section of the book is devoted to Taylor’s appearance on the ABC television program ‘You Can’t Ask That’, in which participants broach taboo subjects. In her case, it was death, and she had to answer ten questions, such as ‘Do you have a bucket list?’ And ‘Have you considered suicide?’ The practical, helpful answers that Taylor came up with could have been taken to the stage as a straightforward monologue, but in the perfect horseshoe of the Fairfax Studio, the questions are shifted on to the audience. We are part of the story.

The strongest moments in Morris’s performance draw on her experience as a veteran stand-up. The show opens and closes with the lights up, with Morris throwing out comments, jokes and questions to individual members of the audience. This largely improvised interaction makes for a unique interpretation of the play, one that opens up the much-needed conversation about death and relieves the loneliness of the dying, joining us all into a more compassionate community.

In the final moments of the play, with the house lights still on, Morris delivers her closing remarks in short snatches of monologue, almost poetic in their rhythmic phrasing. Law’s script and Morris’s interpretation of it builds from here to an ending that allows us to imagine a better way to go, where the end of life is acknowledged and discussed, and the dying person has some control over settling her own affairs, choosing her way forward, and even how her life will end.

An optimistic play, after all.