Death himself – a young man with perfectly styled hair wearing a neat shirt and trousers – is our narrator, greeting us on a Pinteresque stage: Death’s dingy, fog-filled office, full of box files with an empty corkboard behind a desk. He introduces himself with no qualms about revealing his identity and proceeds to detail his workings.
What may seem a sombre idea is loosened with some unexpected humour. Death brags about his ingenious killing methods – docket spikes, grape-choking, and drowning. His glee at what he manages to mastermind is dark but delivered with a grin.
His musings on the act of death are then punctuated by storytelling scenes. These vignettes detail the final moments of various people death has targeted, showing us the universality of the experience. Death Suits You seems to focus on quite predictable and frustrating choices though – a closeted clergyman and a woman who ‘eats her feelings’, for example.
Sam Hooper is a confident performer with strong stage presence and speaks with clarity and charisma, using the space eagerly. He also has an excellent voice for the unexpected songs which intermittently appear. Their purpose is to lend insight into the deceased characters’ lives but, pleasant as they are, a couple of them seem to repeat what we’ve already learned rather than reveal anything particularly new. Some interpretive dance also plays a part but again it showcases Hooper’s skills more than elucidating the characters.
The key problem is that after the first few character interludes, there is a sense that we are meandering a little, floating from backstory to backstory. It feels like they could have been told in any order, rather than building on each other towards a climax. An interesting insight is presented as Death discusses his importance to us, suggesting that we need the looming concept of death to add meaning to our lives and have the drive to make things worthwhile. The play doesn’t then run with this epiphany though, which feels like a missed opportunity.
As the play ends, Hooper has performed with vigour, but the interesting premise and quality actor aren’t matched by a structure that really took us anywhere.