The Breathing Corpses by Laura Wade

 Introduction: “The Breathing Corpses” is a 2005 play by British playwright Laura Wade that explores the effects of death and discovery on three interconnected strangers. The story unfolds in reverse, following Amy the chambermaid, Jim the storage owner, and Kate the walker after they each encounter a dead body. The play won a Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright for Wade and premiered at the Royal Court. Receiving three awards, it was nominated for an ‘Olivier Award’ for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre.

Characters

• Amy: A hotel chambermaid who finds a body on the job. 
• Jim: A storage unit owner who discovers a dismembered body, leading to his subsequent suicide. 
• Kate: A woman who stumbles upon a corpse during her morning walk. 
• Rachel: An assistant in Jim’s store house 
•  Ben: Younger partner of Kate

Stage Setting and Properties: The initial scene is set in a hotel room, where the lovely chambermaid Amy discovers the body of a guest who has committed suicide. The Back Room of the Star is a fine venue for intimate theatre. All is black, as it serves also as a music venue. A dark curtain formed the backdrop. A bed emerged from this for the hotel room scene. Chambermaid Amy’s cleaning materials container, her rubber gloves, and a chair were all else. For Jim’s container business office, 2 chairs were produced and a small desk. For the scene in Kate’s kitchen the same furniture was placed somewhere else. A door was lugged about in one scene, and a fine, superbly crafted kitchen knife made its presence felt in the final scene. Some very evocative music set the scene, and accompanied the scene changes. Lighting was very effective throughout.

Chambermaid Amy entered the hotel room with her box of cleaning materials, rubber gloves at the ready, to discover a corpse in the bed.  She was therefore shocked, but not too shocked, and sat down to have a heart-to-heart talk with the dead man about her fears of the sack, her rather nondescript life, about his life, and what might have brought him to this distressing end. She made no attempt to summons the hotel manager, and found herself guiltily reading his rather nice, unsealed suicide note, which mentioned something about a woman in a box.

Then the scene moves backward on to a self-storage company’s premises. Jim, the owner, was chatting to his assistant Rachel when his nice wife Elaine appeared. Suffering despondency due to ‘empty nest’ syndrome and lack of any meaningful occupation, she apologised for turning up at the office. They seemed a nice couple living a fairly humdrum existence. Rachel pointed out the smell coming from one of the containers. A phone call was to be made.

Later the scene moves further backward to a couple of months to show the kitchen of workaholic, abrasive Kate, who lives with her younger partner Ben and his, in her opinion, horrid dog. She was frantically trying to catch up with work missed the previous day, as she’d been at the police station, the dog having discovered the corpse of a young woman lying behind a bush. The dog barking incessantly for attention, she kicked it hard, twice, so hard that blood flowed. The returning Ben was furious. Sparks flew, yet attraction remained, it seemed.  A curious relationship. 

We then moved forward in time, to Jim’s garage weeks after the opening of the box from which the foul smell had come. A dead woman had been found inside. Jim was a total wreck, busying himself with dismantling all the doors in the house, and quite unable to return to work. His dear wife Elaine did not know how to help him, other than to fetch his pills from the chemist. Rachel popped by, she couldn’t help either. Jim just disintegrated before our eyes.

Great relief was felt at first when we found ourselves back in the hotel with Amy on her morning round. Once more a body in the bed, only this one is alive. This was travelling salesman Charlie, charismatic, attractive, but with wild eyes. He charmed Amy, we began to feel concerned. Even more so when he produced a fine, expensive kitchen knife in a black box, one of his samples, he said. She agreed to meet him for a walk in the park the next morning.  This play is full of tension, one felt continuously uneasy. There was humour too.

 Structure and Themes

• Reverse Structure:

The play's narrative structure works backward from the moment of discovery, gradually revealing the events that led to the death. 

• Impact of Death:

Breathing Corpses examines the psychological and relational impact of encountering death, particularly on people whose lives are dramatically altered by it. 

• Mortality and Morality:

The play delves into how characters grapple with their own mortality and the ethical questions raised by their macabre discoveries. 

Significance  

• “The Breathing Corpses” is considered a "powerful new play" that is both "delicate yet brutal" in its depiction of death and its consequences.
• The play's structure and its exploration of the unsettling aspects of mortality have been praised by critics.