Hello friends, its been a minute! Since I last wrote a blog post, we’ve done some fieldwork, I’ve finished my dissertation edits and sent it off for review, and we went on a 3-week holiday with my parents around the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. More on that later, I have a whole slew of blog posts planned for the next few months! But first, a play review!

I was contacted recently about doing a review of the play ‘Plotters’, which is on right now at Edinburgh Fringe! ” The dark world of 19th-century grave-robbing has inspired Plotters, a fast-paced comedy that makes its world premiere at this summer’s Fringe Festival” was certainly an enticing byline describing the show, and I was excited to check it out! The team was kind enough to send me an early recording to view, since I was not able to stay in Scotland for Fringe.

‘Plotters’ was written by Brian Parks, who previously won a Fringe First Award, and follows “four misfits as they attempt the perfect graveyard crime”. Right up my alley! It was directed by Fringe First Award winning director Margarett Perry, along with Natalie Tell, which stars actors Matthew Boston, Mark Boyett, Brian Dykstra, and Kate Siahaan-Rigg.

The stage dressing was stark and moody, with black curtains on either side of the space of the stage, drawing the focus to the actors in the centre. As I am someone who studies burials and sometimes the structures built to keep grave robbers away, I loved that the opening scene ended with “Ok…lets go steal his corpse!”

The lights flicking on and off to denote the passage of time and changing of scene is great, it really punctuated the movement. I appreciated Kate Siahaan-Rigg’s character lamenting about the fear of being buried after seeing what happens to bodies as they decompose. She exclaims that they will “have to burn me”, and describes bugs eating her eyes. This is a very real fear for many people, coming to terms with what might happen to their body after death. While today there are several different options for body disposition, in 19th-century Scotland where this the play takes place, people had to come to terms with the decomposition of their own corpse…if they weren’t taken by grave robbers!

It was during this period that Edinburgh, and many parts of the UK, lived in fear of having the bodies of their loved ones stolen by Resurrection Men, who looked for the recently-buried to dig up and sell to the Anatomy schools who were in need of cadavers to teach surgical students about the human body. Body snatching operations, like the one portrayed in ‘Plotters’, were all too real! Many burial grounds built guard towers and hired around the clock guards to ensure the recently buried were left underground, while other sites had ‘dead houses’, which were used in the UK to keep bodies until they had become too decomposed to be desirable for anatomists. Can you imagine burying those bodies after a few weeks?

In the play, the group plans a final heist of a large ‘monument’, and spends time scoping out the burial ground during the daytime to ensure they knew exactly where to go in the dark. This plan, of course, did not go as planned, as one of their associates insisted on spending time on Gin Lane. “Gin Lane is a one way street….to gin!” The others head down to find him, and are tempted by the libations offered from the bars. This scene was hilarious, especially because they were holding martini glasses. When gin lanes were running at their most dangerous in the UK, after the drink was introduced by the Dutch in the 17th century, the British drank it by the pint, not really grasping how much stronger it was than their ale or cider!

Like all good, slightly bumbling heroes (anti-heroes?), the group miiight be celebrating a little prematurely, but you’ll just have to head over to Fringe and watch ‘Plotters’ to find out what happens to our fearsome four!

“Angels are just Heaven’s midges”

I wish I’d been able to stay in Edinburgh long enough to see the play in person! If you’re at Fringe this year and love a dark comedy and talking about cemeteries, I highly recommend seeing ‘Plotters’, at Venue 20, the Assembly Rooms, from August 9-18th, and 20-25th. You’ll have a fantastic time!

Click HERE for more information & tickets!