Theater | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper: Cremation is for the forgettable. If you really want to leave a mark after you're gone, have your flesh ground into patties and served as hamburgers to the bereaved.
That's more or less the idea of Mumburger, Sarah Kosar's surreal, genuine, lovely play getting its American premiere at off the WALL's Carnegie Theater this month. A mom dies in a car accident and leaves behind a will stipulating that her body be burger-fied and delivered to her widower, Hugh, and daughter, Tiffany, for consumption.
2 comments:
I read the opening sentence of this article and I have never been more intrigued and confused. The premise of the play focuses on a family after the death of another member, and that process of grief. Seems like a typical family drama, but their twist is the mom wants to be cremated into a burger. And also, the whole family is vegan. While this premise seems silly, and honestly, it is very Sweeney Todd in this aspect: let's cook someone dead and get the whole use out of them. I think that they could have had an interesting show just with the premise on whether or not they would listen to the mom, and make her into a burger; because that already brings up the conversation of, well, we made this burger and now we need to eat it. There are a lot of morals having to do with eating another human, like what if the family really actually likes the taste of their mom's flesh? Who knows. However, the added twist is that the whole family is vegan, including the mother. Imagine being home one day, your mother has just passed away, and the lawyer comes and tells you that oh, your mother is dead and she wants to be cooked into a burger. Oh, and she wants you and your dad to eat it. The show sounds incredibly interesting, and I want to hear what the audience perspective on it is.
I was really intrigued by the title and beginning of this article. I was even more interested when I realized that the play was not, at its core, a comedy. I think this play sounds really engaging because it deals with such recognizable feelings and experiences—everyone has experienced some kinds of loss and can identify with the emotion—but she approaches the circumstances from a new and very strange perspective. I can’t really tell if the play will be successful or not, from this article. I am a little apprehensive because I am concerned that the twist of the hamburger is just a way to slide yet another play about families reconnecting by an audience. While this may be the case, there is no reason to believe that this one will not succeed and perhaps it could be one of the most powerful and moving of these kinds of plays. I hope to keep track of the show and see how audiences feel about it.
Post a Comment