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Play Dead

 
Douglas Gibson Review by Douglas Gibson 4 Published: 10 Nov 2025 Playhouse East Show Dates: 5 Nov 2025-8 Nov 2025

Echo suffers a cruel fate in Greek mythology: as punishment for distracting Hera, she is stripped of her ability to form sentences and condemned to repeat only the last words spoken by others. To add to her misery, she becomes besotted with Narcissus who, irked by her lack of speech, spurns her advances and leaves her to waste away in the forest. In this fearless, funny and multisensory production of Play Dead, written by and starring Bailey Edwards, we meet our modern-day Echo in a similar state of entropy.

The fourth wall is not so much broken as bulldozed by the gifted Bailey Edwards.

In an act of revenge fitting for the Greek gods, Echo has stolen his ex’s dog and now waits anxiously to hear from him. He emerges from a dog cage, devouring a grapefruit, eaten up by neurosis. The fourth wall is not so much broken as bulldozed by the gifted Bailey Edwards, who impressively manages to build rapport with us after such a startling arrival. Through clever choices early on – a game of catch with the grapefruit, dancing to hold music while on the phone to a salesman – the relationship between character and spectator is quickly and playfully established.

Director Mia Hull, who specialises in reimagining Greek myth, infuses the play with physicality to convey Echo’s tenuous link with the outside world. In one remarkable moment, Edwards showcases his talent as a physical actor, holding a complex yoga pose as he recounts Echo’s memory of meeting his ex. His absent sister, who cares for their mother and is a grounding presence, is played with warmth and sympathy by Annalisa Plumb. She too appears from the dog cage – hauled out by a microphone cable – and acts as a foil to Echo and his psychological demise, pulling us back from a Beckettian, abstract space. Both actors are compelling in their roles, their fraught yet loving bond as siblings completely believable.

The set – one corner a mesh of cables and broken stereos – is symbolic of severed communication and becomes messier and more unkempt as the play unfolds. Where some productions seek slick, tidy scene changes, Hull makes inventive use of the space to mirror the unravelling of Echo’s mind. Just as Ovid’s gods in Metamorphoses are driven by conflict and impulse, Echo too is plagued with inner turmoil and impetuousness. However, the modern-day protagonist that Edwards has created is not a nymph of the woods but a creature of self-sabotage and malaise.

Play Dead peels back the layers beneath the surface with humour and care, deftly showing how stories immortalised in myth are interwoven with our own lives.

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The Blurb:

Echo has a broken heart. A gutted-from-the-inside, cut-off-your-toes broken heart. His sister is a phone call away, but he opts for some Classical* revenge.*feral This dark comedy is a modern myth — exploring addiction as a love language and that inexplicable drive to melt into the person you love. Written by Bailey Edwards