Death Kills is a short three act play first staged in September 2005, as part of NUTS production at the University of New South Wales. Adapted from three different original works, the play blended farce, horror and period drama. It ran for a week in Studio One, a small on-campus black box theatre, and recieved the NUTS award for best publicity, also coming in second place for the Best Original Script award.




Death Kills: Paul Ayre, Tom Hogan and Emma Burnell as Death.

Plot Synopsis

Everybody dies. But what if Death not only had a face, but many faces? One to suit the individual: a Death for every occasion? Here, we meet three hapless individuals as they encounter, bargain with, laugh at, taunt and, inevitably, accompany Death. And in each case, Death is presented in an entirely different light – be it kind, sarcastic or insidious. Each encounter takes place in the same apartment somewhere in New York. Each time Death arrives the same record is playing. Each story is exactly twenty years apart to the day. Is there a pattern here? Every journey is different, but you already know the ending.

Death Kills.

(The blurb from the [official website http://www.deathkills.org])

Act one of the play charts the last hours of one Lou Bookman (Jon Rachlin) as he deals with a pithy, Sinatra-esque incarnation of Death (Paul Ayre). Bookman and Death engage in a game of wits over the life of the rather shallow girl next door, Tanya (Skye Kunstelj). Act one is half taken from One For the Angels, an episode of the Twilight Zone penned by Rod Serling, and half improvised.

Act two follows Sterne (Chris Handschuch), a nervy writer who decides to occupy his friends apartment in order to solicit with a hooker; this leads to a case of mistaken identity, a run in with a gay scotsman with a shoe fetish, and a fatal (and confusing) run in with Death (Tom Hogan). Act two was again half based on a segment from Deconstructing Harry, the black comedy by Woody Allen, and half improvised.

Act Three is centered around Peter Pinter (Dan McCusker) and his run-ins with two women: Gwendolyne (Keely Jobe), and Death (Emma Burnell), both of whom prey on his weaknesses and drive him towards his fate. Act three is by far the darkest of all three acts, and is based on the short story We Can Get Them For You, Wholesale by Neil Gaiman. Act three ends with a nightmarish cresendo of noise, capping off the play at roughly 75 minutes. After a brief silence, the curtain call was made.

Design

The Design of Death Kills was minimal and exceptionally pliant - given that all three acts took place in roughly the same space (a fairly non-descript apartment in New York), it was essentioal that the space could be filled by light, sound, performances etc, and therefore had to maintain a degree of "facelessness". Set Designer Caro Wallace Took the key elements of an apartment (window, door, table, chairs) and placed them in a vacuum-type space, and let period-specific props (usually of an "evolving" theme - for example, each different era had a different phone and clock) dictate the tone. Outside of the "apartment" was a large screen (used to project a short video segment for act three directed by Jeremy Brull, and used to display shillouettes of Skye Kunstelj and Chris Handschuch in acts two and three to the audience with the aid of backlights) and a "bar": A tall, round table and two stools, at which Peter and the third manifestation of Death had their "negotiations" during act three. Lighting was used to perforate the space, enabling seemingly improbable effects to take take place - voice overs, scene changes, the passsage of time, walking through walls, shifting focus, etc. Essentially the entire set was red white and black, a color theme continued in the costumes of all three Deaths.

Critical Backlash

Althougth the show recieved generally positive reviews and was booked out most nights, Neil Gaiman refused to attend on the grounds that he was "not in the country", which the director took to mean "too lazy to attend". The aforementioned critical backlash came when Verhoeven, not one to take such an affront lying down, mailed Gaiman three pounds of whale meat in a bag. Gaiman is currently pressing charges.

Apart from that messy little incident, the show went off without a hitch and was arguably one of the most successful shows of the year, drawing good crowds and winning the NUTS award for best publicity. Verhoeven was somewhat miffed that his script did not win best original work the the awards; having used up his supply of whale meat he set off for the antarctic. He has not been heard from since.

Cast and Crew

Cast

Skye Kunstelj as Hooker, Receptionist and Tanya

Daniel McCusker as Peter Pinter

Emma Burnell as Death #3

Tom Hogan as Death #2

Paul Ayre as Death #1

Keely Jobe as Psychiatrist and Gwendolyne

Jon Rachlin as Lou Bookman

Chris Handschuch as Sterne and Doctor


Crew

Paul Verhoeven - Writer/Director

Miles Portek - Producer

Adam Hitchings - Stage Manager

Sanger - Assistant Stage Manager

Caroline Wallace - Designer

Tom Rosser - Lighting Design

Stuart Spoard - Sound design

Amelia Clancey - Sound Op

Jeremy Brull - Video

Katie Christou - Costumes

Louie Zezeran - Publicity

Soundtrack

Massman by Philip Glass
The Girl From Ipenema by Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto
Fukt Perkusiv/Something About Bad Drugs, Schizophrenics and Grain Silos by Set Fire to Flames
Benny and the Jets by Elton John
Original works and additional sound mixing by Stuart Spoard

External Links

DeathKills.org - The official site

The NUTS Death Kills image galleries