by Laura Kressly
Theatre doesn’t need another all-white, all-male absurdist production ridiculing vulnerable people. Whilst fun in its staging and innovative in its storytelling, Flies lazily exploits cishet, male power dynamics in a Kafka-esque nightmare for fly-phobic Dennis whilst exploiting systemic, patriarchal structures to make him even more of a victim.
By Laura Kressly
In 1930s Key West, German x-ray technician Carl Tanzler harbours an obsession for a local woman dying of Tuberculosis. Claiming to have nine degrees and access to technology that will cure her, he lavishes her with gifts and dubious treatments though the married woman never returns his affections. When she inevitably dies, he pays for the construction a mausoleum for her. Not content with this tribute, two years after her death he steals her remains and lives with them as his wife for seven years before being discovered.
