Playing at The Blue Room Theatre as a part of Summer Nights, Braindead is a family drama with a magical realism twist to it. We are delighted by quick-witted quips, extraordinary performances, and an unveiling plot that leaves you gasping.
We enter a fairly standard family drama show. We get little pieces of why certain family members feud, how the relationships function, and who, shockingly, is missing. Gathering for Christmas after Harriet recently returned from some kind of vague ‘treatment,’ the rest of the family exchange glances and lines about the uncertainty of her behaviour and whether she can really be trusted. Eventually, it’s revealed that she became a zombie through a COVID-like viral infection and, after being infected for some time, found treatment and has ‘fully’ recovered. I absolutely loved this show; I didn’t remember the blurb after I had last read it when the Summer Nights program was launched, so even the fact that she was a zombie was a lovely reveal, but the show just kept hitting.
The plot weaves an overarching idea through, perfectly dropping hints and little lines that culminate in a heavy-hitting final couple of scenes. The performances are something to feast upon; everyone just absolutely nails it. Anna Harris as Harriet floats gorgeously through this intense anxiety and need for everything to be normal again. Her breakaway monologues are just spectacular; the emotional highs and lows are so intensely felt, my heart broke with hers. Daniela Da Costa as Harriet’s sister plays a kind of emotional straight man, trying to hold the family together and make the relationship between her husband and her sister amenable. She is sensational at playing off the emotional swings of the other characters and gives the audience a needed emotional grounding. Matthew Bryan as Harriet’s brother-in-law and Eleanor Rowe as the mum bring the audience to the outside emotional highs. Eleanor delivers a delightful classic suburban mum caught up in trivial matters and sweeping things under the rug, and Matthew acts as a kind of anti-hero to Harriet, bringing a shocking reveal and playing against her need for normalcy.
The plot sometimes wavered for me. For whole sections of the show, it seemed to want to use the zombie infection as some kind of metaphor for possibly addiction but became muddled against pushing some kind of relatability to COVID, which I think was unnecessary. The show also had a stunning concluding moment at the end of a monologue from Harriet, shocking us with a final twist but kept going and ended kind of limping out to an ending.
Besides this, I think Braindead achieved something remarkable with intensely funny dialogue, phenomenal performances, and some heavy-hitting writing and directing. I will definitely watch out for something else from writer and director Izzy Stonehouse; she has achieved something wonderful.
Braindead is on at The Blue Room Theatre from Feb 4-8.