A Matter of Life and Death

Synopsis

In 1945, a young airman jumps to certain death from his burning aircraft, addressing his last words to June, a girl he has never met. Following an angelic blunder, caused by a classic English pea-souper, Peter Carter miraculously survives and finds June in the flesh. But things are not so simple. To stay alive, Peter is forced to take himself, and the heavenly authorities, to the Universal Court of Appeal.

Our Review:

11 May 2007

There’s no faulting the ambition, or the exuberance, of this spirited adaptation for the National, in association with Kneehigh Theatre, of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1946 movie which was part technical fantasia, part love story and part Shavian debate in a celestial court of law. It is just a little hard, sometimes, to see the point of it all.

Tom Morris and director Emma Rice have taken the outline of the story and reinvented the central image of the stairway to heaven as a mobile parabola resembling the London Eye. A fighter pilot, Peter Carter (Tristan Sturrock) has bailed out of his flaming aeroplane without a parachute after being talked into survival mode by a wireless operator, June (Lyndsey Marshal) on the ground.

In the film, Kim Hunter’s June was American and David Niven’s dashing pilot a true-blue smitten Briton whose affair somehow represented the Anglo-American alliance at the end of the war. Here, the liaison is purely romantic, and the ...

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Latest User Review

Tim Armitage - 11 June 2007:

This is a real treat - a kaleidescopic nad surreal masterpiece that manages to have heart and soul. Based on Powell and Pressburger's innovative film masterpiece this production uses Aerial work, choreography, projections and live music and song to create teh forties mood. The two lead performances are astonishing teh production is very funny and moving. Emma rice has done a fantastic job adapting and directing this piece and has created something new for the stage. You laugh, cry ,think and are moved - what more could you ask for? Awesome - Kneehigh are the new complicite!...

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