Why stop the party just because your best friend is dead?
Director: Bad Company
Producer: Matthew Vecchio
Cast: Kurt Murray, Sarah Hone, Andrew Pantelis
Exploring the issues of drug addiction, alcoholism and recovery in a very unique way, Bad Company is reviving its 2009 Fringe sell-out "comedy with a point", The Adventures of Dead Jim, at the Bakehouse Theatre.
Jim and his two friends Louis and Liz are having the greatest drug and alcohol fuelled night of their life. Within minutes of returning home, Jim is dead. Liz and Louis, not to let a deceased one intrude on their partying, use Jim's lifeless body like a puppet, retelling the story of his life, demise and lost freedom.
The two friends in turn use Jim as a confessional, his rigid demeanour acting like a mirror forcing them to face the harsh truth of the selfish lives they lead.
The escape, isolation, excitement, successes and tragedies of addiction are explored in multiple ways that transit smoothly from the absurd to the postmodern, from the real into the surreal.
Blogger Peter from Kryztoff Raw
When close mate Jim dies after drug and alcohol abuse, his mates, Liz (Sarah Hone) and Lou (Andrew Pantelis) attempt to make sense of it and their lives in front of the slumped friend (Kurt Murray). Originally performed to critical acclaim for the 2009 Fringe, Dead Jim has been revived with a few modifications with many of the original ensemble still in place. It remains very powerful theatre, exploring the nature of drug addiction, alcoholism, recovery and relapse and the extraordinarily self centred world of the players involved – Lou’s searching of Jim’s body in the most impersonal ways for yet more drugs late in the piece is most unsettling. (more)