THEATRE REVIEW: When You Pass Over My Tomb ★★★★

There’s a striking beauty in Sergio Blanco’s When You Pass over my Tomb that looms over us all, where stories of necrophilia, love, and choosing how you die on your own terms, play on our minds. In this third instalment of Blanco’s plays to make it over to the UK, Director and Translator Daniel Goldman is back at the helm, and delivers a piece of theatre that has burrowed away in our mind long after we have stepped far from watching the show.

With Sergio’s stance of autofiction being a genre that’s embedded in all his writing, we as an audience are always on our toes and debating what’s true or not within the text of his work. In all three plays that have been staged in the UK, Blanco has unashamedly put himself right in the centre of his plays, here being portrayed by Al Nedjari, who uses the configurement of the round within The Arcola to become a god-like figure, in a way that compels us to listen, because despite some of the heavy themes in the show, humour always breaks through to ease tension, with Blanco fully aware of what the audience's role in every one of his shows should be. As Al Nedjari embodies the theatrical playwright as a fictionalised ghost, cast members Charlie MacGechan and Danny Scheinmann join from the audience to help Sergio rewrite his own death, from his previous play The Rage of Narcissus, in an attempt to end his life in a more spiritual, empowering move.

With glass-textured flooring lifted from the ground in a central podium, Malena Arcucci does create an ambiguity to their set design, which also sees a life size cow loom above us the whole time. In a show that feels heavy on its themes, the lively nature of Goldman’s direction allows the actors to bounce through with light-heartedness, breaking the walls down to address and ask us questions, to even greeting us as we first entered the space. Richard Williamson’s video shines as an example of keeping us in the moment though when our actors switch back into their assigned characters, and projecting images that depict conflict around the world that ties extraordinarily well with the cases of necrophilia that are presented to us.

As Latin America’s longest living playwright, with over 14 productions alone produced between 2023 - 2024, you can’t help but be admired by the writing and use of autofiction is Sergio Blanco’s work; When you Pass over My Tomb is theatre like no other, told by a company who weave locations, characters, and facts in ways that become effortless, but most importantly, is an enduring love letter to London, that we can’t help but admire.