Sex and death is Howard Barker's patch and the two entwine in this unsurprising family drama dressed to impress as a seductive erotic dance of death.
Eff (who looks like an Edwardian undertaker) has arrived at the family home for his father's funeral. He is distracted from mourning by his father's mistress, Sopron, who has the habit of throwing off her clothes and embracing her dead lover's corpse. The triangle is complete with the arrival of his younger brother Istvan, bizarrely kitted out like a chirpy cockney from Oliver! Not that Eff notices, he's too busy having fantasies about Sopron that look as if they will soon be fulfilled by his father's unusual legacy, one that Sopron - a stickler for etiquette - will ensure is carried out to the letter.
It is beautiful to look at - set in a Gormenghast gothic salon of tarnished mirrors - but preposterous to listen to, as the pompous Eff vomits words, grief and lust as the drama works painfully slowly towards its inevitable consummation. Like so much of Barker's recent work, whose rich talent is in danger of becoming emaciated by too much reverence (he directs his own play here; it needs a director willing to wield the blue pencil) the play is a one trick pony.
Even the language is thin and the tricks of repetition are so frequent that they look like theatrical tics. It is deftly performed and the central premise - loss and desire are close cousins - is interesting but the presentation is so absurdly and suffocatingly mannered that it is not just a case of Dead Hands, but completely inert theatre.
