Raw as grief. Tragic as a three foot coffin. Mia Morissey’s song cycle of death and loss IN LOVING MEMORY is a mixture of celebration and scream, love and loss. Morrissey hollers and hoots and howls, raging against the dying of the light, finally going gentle into that good night.

Invoking Elizabeth Kubler Ross and the father of tragic theatre, Aeschylus, Morissey, dressed in designer black, displays an impressive vocal range on her journey to catharsis, with patter between songs that fluctuate between foot in mouth about six feet under, funeral faux pas, and pain filled anguish.

Dan Barber’s black scrim embroidered with quotes on death and back lit with a myriad of candles is strikingly and dramatically evocative.

Mixing the sultry with the sad, the sassy with the solemn, Morrissey makes you feel the yearn for the occupant of the urn, the overwhelming loss, and the eternal thanks for the memories.

Soulful not doleful, emphatically dulcet and dolorous, IN LOVING MEMORY is a requiem of rejoice, reaffirming that the price of love is well worth it, that love is stronger than death.

Running time 60 minutes without interval.

IN LOVING MEMORY is playing the Hayes Theatre, 19 Greenknowe Avenue, Elizabeth Bay tonight at 7pm and tomorrow night at 9pm.

CREDITS:

 Written by and Starring Mia Morrissey

Director Sam Hooper

Music Director Andrew Worboys

Designer Dann Barber

Arranger Charlotte Macinnes