Everything Must Go

The grand and beautiful gesture marking the death of a loved one, the lovable septuagenarian named Karl Fredricksson: if Willy the Wizard's creator can sue J.K. Rowling for stealing his wizard-book idea, then this could become a significant new source of funding for contemporary theatre. Theatre is all but ephemeral. Few traces remain. Just find ten audience members willing to say "It was a play about blue aliens called Atarav" and James Cameron could be your new benefactor.

Laying the future of theatre aside, Everything Must Go is Kristin Fredricksson's touching tribute to her late father. The pair began devising the piece when Karl was diagnosed with cancer and they performed it together shortly before he died.

It might have been seen as a quite problematic starting point for a play as sharing your grief with a paying audience puts them in what could be an uncomfortable position. If it's a substitute for a funeral then there is a kind of pressure to be moved by it, and if you are moved, then it opens the piece up to accusations of being exploitative and of asking you to applaud the grief. What's even riskier is the parading of family members, as it can end up like a mother bringing her baby on stage and saying "Isn't he cute?" The baby will of course be cute, but you might be less inclined to spend ninety minutes exploring the theme than the concerned party will be.

Still, dads and babies are lovely after all, and none more so than Karl Fredricksson. A cross-dressing Olympic level hurdler, a comedian, artist and anarchist – there's plenty to work with. Particularly as Karl was an obsessive hoarder, his house brimming with treasures and his floor invariably "strewn with newspapers, magazines, broken glass, socks, pants and batteries".

Karl's was evidently a full and remarkable life, and if anyone could bring together these disparate elements it is Kristin, whose own work has seen her practise in France, Portugal, Japan and the UK in a number of disciplines, with clowning, puppetry and Butoh all featuring in her work. The result has been a Total Theatre Award and Arches Brick Award for Everything Must Go, which suggests it may be safe to set aside my reservations about "David Copperfield crap" and just appreciate everything that's unique and interesting about personal, biographical performance.