After Life
National Theatre, London
The show that brings the National Theatre back to life – after being open for only a few nights during the 15 months of lockdowns – takes place in a sort of passport office for those who have passed over.
The recently dead are allocated a number and must wait in turn to be buzzed to the desk of a Guide, a supernatural bureaucrat who takes them through an induction process. Each soul – although they hold the bodily form in which they finished – is then given a week to pick a single earthly memory in which they will live for eternity. Those unable or unwilling to name a defining scene remain to serve as guides in this limbo lined high with filing cabinets.