Play Pie and a Pint: Grave Undertaking @ Òran Mór

Fire and pyre make a good rhyming pair but Paddy Cunneen’s Grave Undertaking also includes a singing corpse who rhymes pride with formaldehyde.  It’s up for my rhyme of the year. 

Jim McCaber deals with the macabre.  After inheriting his father’s funeral parlour he turns out to be one of the best in the business according to the testimony provided by a Mr Hayes. And Mr Hayes should know as he’s an embalming success story; steamrollered out of existence he now looks as good as new.  So it’s a normal day for the undertaker and his singing corpse when a body which must be prepared for a family viewing shakes Jim’s life to the core.

Grave Undertaking tracks a relationship’s rise and demise while contrasting lively corpses with a man who’s alive but barely goes out.  As Jim lays out Margaret’s body he must also face up to a relationship that must be laid to rest. 

This comic encounter with mortality is another enjoyably wordy play for Òran Mór.  Jimmy Chisholm’s Jim is verbally effervescent.  His language takes poetic flight and is at times grandiose and verbose, but entertaining nonetheless.  Kate Donnelly’s more realistic Margaret uses language to brutal effect during a vehement rant where she’s so angry she almost trips over the words she so wants to spit out.     

While indicative of Jim’s inability to move on, one of the songs is a bit repetitious however Grave Undertaking reminds us that death is not the only opportunity for letting go.