Death Of Long Pig

Tuesday, 7 July 2009 - Saturday, 1 August 2009
Times : 15:00 - 17:00 19:30 - 21:30

Finborough Theatre, Finborough Arms, Fulham, SW10 9ED

How Much: £13.00 (Tickets) , £9.00 (Concessions)

Long Pig, or Pakeha, is a Polynesian word for white man. Nigel Planer's latest play is about two very talented white men facing death on different Pacific Islands: writer Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa and painter Paul Gaugin on Tahiti. The play takes contrasting attitudes to death and uses them as a starting point for a morbid meditation of its own.

Until very recently in many Pacific islands, death and ghosts were celebrated and dead relatives consulted and conferred with. This joyous attitude to passing over affects all who settle there and certainly the serene writer Stevenson as he reflects on a full life and plots his spirit journey back to Edinburgh, which is where he wants to pass the afterlife. Gaugin meanwhile is about to commit suicide and his principle concern is not to be buried in a Catholic manner. Unlucky, Paul!

Pointless aside - I have actually sailed to the Marquesas and visited Gaugin's grave. There is a massive crucified Jesus on his grave, with a bee's nest in the wound on his side, and tired as I was by five weeks at sea, this living statue made me feel as religious as I ever have, despite the atheist underneath it. Anyway, it soon passed...

Planer (Neal in The Young Ones, co-founder of the Comedy Store, etc.) is a man of many talents, some better than others, but this reflection on the final journey promises brains, jokes and plenty to take home with you.