A stomach-turning celebration of death at Belvoir Theatre.

January 17, Belvoir Theatre

Oedipus Schmoedipus is an exercise in the experimental, and a largely unsuccessful one. The show’s central concept: ‘What is death?’ serves as the inspiration for a seemingly random hour of comic skits tied loosely together by copious amounts of fake blood.

As bewildering as it was violent, the show’s opening scene – introducing writers and performers Mish Grigor and Zoë Coombs Marr –provided a shocking and adrenaline-fuelled display of suicide. From gunshot to stabbing to bombing, the two performers’ brazen and repeated self-harm was accompanied by a humorously ill-fitting soundtrack by Rihanna. Many theatre-goers faced their shock with laughter; others shielded their eyes.

Post-bloodbath, the following 10 minutes saw cleaners thoroughly mopping up the stage. Avante-garde skit or OH&S requirement, it remains unclear.

On with the show and Grigor and Coombs Marr made their triumphant return to the stage, (having somehow survived the opening skit), and launched into a wholly simplistic comedy routine. After posing hot-topic questions to the audience: “What is death?”, and “How can we recognise it?”, the duo fused the thoughts of great writers – Aeschylus, Chekhov, Ibsen, Molière, Strindberg et al – with banal wordplay:  “We wouldn’t...