Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Arifa Akbar

You Are Going to Die review – nothing is off-limits in this naked meditation on mortality

Exposed … Adam Scott-Rowley in You Are Going to die.
Exposed … Adam Scott-Rowley in You Are Going to Die. Photograph: Ryan Buchanan

A man sits on a toilet seat under a spotlight, his naked body smeared with chalk and black splodges. He gets up to strut, writhe or jiggle his bits. It might sound like the stuff of an underground fetish club – Adam Scott-Rowley its creature – but it is a physical meditation on mortality and the dying body.

There is no through-narrative, and the show is built on surreal non-sequitur flashes, some arcane and inaccessible, others searing, tragic, comically grotesque. The show’s creator, Scott-Rowley is an astonishingly protean performer who is magnetic to watch. He preens under a spotlight like a young Adonis but then bends to become an elderly woman dancing stiffly or an old man weeping in pain. He might be a figure from a biblical hell in some scenes – a Dantean fiend or one of Hieronymus Bosch’s wretches, silently screaming.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.