Alice Mayer Impresses in a Pitch-Black Dead Ex Horror Comedy

An intense movement piece opens this rollercoaster of a play by Alice Mayer. As disembodied voices ponder black widows and a thumping beat rocks the background, Mayer moves to the music under vivid multi-coloured LEDs by lighting designer Celine Effendi, infusing the room with enticing energy. It’s a punchy opening that rolls the red carpet out for a narrative with plenty of highs, lows and raw potential that mark Mayer as a serious emerging talent. So writes Harry Conway for theQR.co.uk…

The story follows Charlie (played by Mayer, also writer and director) as she navigates several sticky relationships with one fatal commonality; after the inevitable breakup, her ex-boyfriends all end up dead, usually in some form of freak accident. It’s a curse that follows Charlie from her GCSE days right through to university, and though it causes her a fair share of existential anxiety it also never puts her off from trying again with another would-be flame, until her final and most devastating relationship with Joe finally takes its toll…

Blending Horror and Comedy

It’s around this point that the narrative pulls back to reveal Charlie is sharing all of this with a disembodied and largely disinterested therapist, right as she’s detailing the gory little specifics of another dead ex. It’s this kind of playfulness that allows the show’s unique blend of horror and comedy to really work, with healthy splashes of both throughout. The grisly details of each death are sickeningly explicit, yet Charlie is always quick to make light of everything and even sing a song or two to keep the mood high.

“It’s a punchy opening that rolls the red carpet out for a narrative with plenty of highs, lows and raw potential that mark Mayer as a serious emerging talent.“

It’s an almost perfect setup for a latter half that takes on heavier subject matter with mixed results. Her troubling relationship with Joe is introduced in fast forward, with a rosy initial honeymoon period that quickly becomes nightmarish in the span of what feels like only a minute or two. There’s a real sense of important bits being shoved in that could do with better leadup or organic build in what came before, so that the darker, more pivotal side to the relationship feels grounded.

This becomes especially pronounced as we reach the end of the show and things take another turn, this time with the frame narrative of the therapy sessions proving to share a connection with everything that’s come before. Again, it’s ambitious but executed in a way that lacks firm grounding in the rest of the narrative, and fails to make the impact that would help end the show as brilliantly as it had begun.

Brilliance is clear throughout, and the writing, the performance, and the pacing are all top-notch. With a little finessing of story structure here, Mayer’s play is sure to become a horror classic.

Featured Image: Hourglass Poster