Tags
"Triple Bypass" by Deena MP Ronayne, Aberdeen Community Theatre, Alex Stewart, Amy Conway, Death, Deena MP Ronayne, Edinburgh Fringe, Hardly Working Promotions, Memento Mori, Sean Hay, The Spaces on the Mile, Theatre Review
[The following contains spoilers.]
Deena MP Ronayne‘s “Triple Bypass” is not so much “three ten minute plays” as three weird and wonderful conversations. They have been lately brought to the Space on the Mile by the Aberdonian theatre company Hardly Working.
These are stories “about living for death and dying for life.” Each of the three conversations concludes with the envisaging of death as a cleansing process. In “Seeking Dignity,” Darnell (Sean Hay) is purged of his impurities following an encounter with a euthanasist. His visitor (Alex Stewart) has apparently hired herself out as a home-help exterminator but she is soon pursuing some retributive justice of her own. Yet through her sheer proximity to death, she ends up dutifully administering at Darnell’s side, almost like a layperson who is bringing communion. Darnell experiences a last-minute conversion to honesty, empathy and, presumably, the Grace of God.
The blunt broaching of paedophilia in this first scenario is in fact labouring to buy room for levity later in the play. “Seeking Dignity” is itself never wholly serious, with bursts of vampy rock music cheerfully interrupting both the drama and the realism. In the second story, “Close to Black,” we join two female singers who are shut out of Heaven. This appears to be an afterparty that is so highly exclusive that only perfect pop stars are permitted entry. Almost everybody inside is twenty-seven, naturally. One star (Amy Conway) is obviously Amy Winehouse. The other (Stewart) – well, my guesses had swung between Sandy Denny and Whitney Houston – but she turns out to be Karen Carpenter.
In being conscious and speaking, these characters are only officially “dead.” Death has otherwise rather lost its sting for them. After this, the play becomes steeply silly. The third story, “Tango-ed Web,” features all of the aforementioned actors. Here, the characters are living again but now they are insects. This play will be only still alive for you if you like silliness. Fortunately for me, I love silliness. A widow spider entertains a suitor and he comes into her parlour. A bee bombards them with dating advice. A largely apocryphal – or even distinctly slanderous – account of the mating habits of these spiders follows.
“Triple Bypass” is a fun-loving show with some nice comic acting. It had been originally performed online during the pandemic. If it constitutes COVID theatre, it is nonetheless never a memento mori. The thought of your own annihilation is hardly going to bother you during this whimsical escapism.
Tychy 
It was whilst I was in the great library of Utonic Manor that I did discover (Pronounced discubré) a diary of one Perez Rochibauld Botendaddy Utonic the Oneth (Pronounced Wunthe) who died with the ancient honour of this free and accepted Commonwealth of the belov’d Quaker the Hon. Wm. Penne, at the battle of the Wilderness against the shrieking demonic Confederates whilst serving the glorious Grand Army of this sacred Republick, being now so entombed in the sepulcher at Utonic mound high above Olde Uniontowne. I oft found myself there roaking a Cigaret-tika of the Seneca tribe. This diary being lately gifted to the free library of the Commonwealth in the County of Somerset this year of the most Christian and sole legal deity of Pennsylvania per ruling of the Court of Quarter Sessions January 18 of 1896 at pp. 37-41 Judge Frieball Unterwarius presiding.