A sizeable crowd mills around the Leake Street tunnel under Waterloo Station, shivering in the spitting rain and clutching coats tight against the wind. 7:00pm is a popular time for shows and the throngs are growing, streaming into the main festival space or siphoning off into annex locations nearby. I stand with the gathering who have arrived for a funeral; someone remarks that it’s appropriate weather for a burial.
Shortly before the appointed meeting time, two men bearing a casket have pushed their way through the crowd and deposited their load on the ground, upon which they immediately sit and begin chatting with us as if it is the most natural thing in the world to rest oneself upon an occupied coffin. They eventually spring up to attention when a somber woman obscured by veils and dressed in widow’s blacks arrives, bearing a platter of flowers and an audio speaker. As it begins broadcasting a lively riff of New Orleans jazz, the two men press gang two of the attendees into serving as pallbearers and all of us process as a mourning parade toward Unit 9.
We enter into a different world and I am genuinely bowled over: I’ve seen Unit 9 many times before but I’ve never seen it with a tree in the entrance. Two actors stand entangled in its branches, moaning softly. Eerie music follows us as we pass by a woman dragging a spade through a burial ground, two doctors poised over a gurney, a fortune-teller gyrating in her parlour, a garden, an altar; every turn and cove revealing a new environment. I am adrift in flashback visions of Sleep No More as we are finally ushered into the central temple where the service begins, and the performance becomes unlike any funeral service I’ve ever seen.
It’s…jovial.
The Church of the Sturdy Virgin is no spiritless chapel. The reverend erupts with joie de vivre, his congregation inviting us to redefine what it is to celebrate a life well lived. Two of our number are randomly chosen to become the designated dearly departed and adorned with black mantles of their own. We are then quickly separated into six groups and ushered back out among the different settings to experience the process of planning a funeral.
Produced as part of the Let’s Talk @ VAULT Festival program in association with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, The Church of the Sturdy Virgin was created with the objective of “[opening] up conversations around death, dying, and grief.” The show spends the next ninety minutes lifting the veil between the living and the taboo of grief. My group’s experience with the process of funeral-arranging begins with a visit to the mortuary. We’re met by two doctors sporting the grim rictus of fixed smiles and a sensualist passion for the craft of preservation (comically verging on the indecent). They invite us to anoint our cherished cadaver with suitable lotions and pomades to best display their remains at the ceremony later. We are next ushered to a graveyard where our two pallbearing pals from the introduction await to quiz us on which skulls belong to “good people” or “bad people.” As we soon find out, it’s very difficult to tell if a skull belongs to a martyr or a murderer.
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The production is not all laughing in the dark — there’s a certain measure of spookiness. A spiritualist and her assistant coach us through an incantation aiming to summon a presence to inhabit the body of a child-sized doll; I’m rattled afterwards. Being personally averse to all things intentionally frightening, this is the only portion of the evening I don’t enjoy. Thankfully it doesn’t last too long before the group is ushered along to the next stop on the circuit, as heralded by a page who regularly roams the halls ringing a large hand bell to warn hosts when it’s time to move on.
There is not really a narrative in The Church of the Sturdy Virgin. The experience is that of the procession of a family through the grieving process and planning of a funeral, though the actors deliver an organic evolution of the five stages of grief as the evening continues. The show is constantly on the move. The Church of the Sturdy Virgin does offer different tracks and some individualized experiences. There’s plenty I didn’t get to see simply by nature of being in the group I was assigned to. From the glimpses I catch of the two individuals pulled aside for death duty, it’s clear they interact with characters and environments our larger group never encounters. Repeat visits and sheer luck would be necessary to get the whole experience.
Boasting the best scenic use of Unit 9 I’ve seen to date, one can only hope that future doleful affairs could be half as enjoyable as this visit. Immersive environment fans will find plenty to examine and engage with throughout the performance — the space is decadently filled out for the standards of a short-lived festival show, with a luscious dispersal of props and large set pieces. While it’s difficult (or possibly impossible) to score one-on-one interactions if one is not assigned the role of a corpse, interaction opportunities are many; visitors should expect to be physically engaged throughout the experience as the audience is often called upon to perform tasks throughout the service to help contribute to the last rites.
Though the show has completed its VAULT Festival run for this year, The Church of the Sturdy Virgin offers many opportunities but imparts one enduring commandment: thou shall not fail to visit, should the experience be resurrected. Missing future incarnations of this immersive experience would be a grave mistake.
The Church of the Sturdy Virgin has concluded; learn more about Dank Parish.
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