Beckie Mills
posted 10 February 2005

27-year-old Laura Wade's new play opens with a mother and daughter having a picnic in a graveyard. This sets the tone for what is a gently irreverent comedy about death. Margot Leicester gives a sympathetic and watchable performance as Myra, who when diagnosed with bone cancer, begins planning her own funeral in enthusiastic detail.

This opening premise is certainly intriguing. What do you do when you know you are going to die? Myra devises a PowerPoint presentation on homemade funerals, complete with tacky sound effects. Her husband and daughters struggle to see the funny side, until Myra forces them to confront their own fears, and get on with their lives and each other. The appearance of a cardboard coffin onstage raises a smile, as does a string of mild observational gags.

The play is at its most touching when it examines the mystical bond between mother and daughter, and Jenna's admission even before her mother is dead, that she is 'Missing you already', and must 'practise' not sharing her troubles with her mother. Michael Pennington as husband Alec is reticent, struggling to keep his own fear buried. The striking set mixes middle class living room with tree-lined cemetery, giving a sense of the outside indoors. The raised stage with a cross section of earth cut away is a constant reminder of the impending burial.

Perhaps that constant reminder becomes a disadvantage at points. Once we have seen Myra bring her family closer together and they begin to come to terms with her impending death, we are waiting for her to die. The play never quite delves as deep as one might hope at the outset. A nicely-judged scene between husband and wife should perhaps have been the final one.

While moments warm the heart, Colder Than Here, is neither as funny nor as moving as the similarly themed A Minute Too Late, currently playing at the National. Despite an ironic nod in the direction of multimedia, Colder Than Here somehow feels more old-fashioned than Complicite's show, resurrected twenty years after the original production.

Till 26 February 2005.