Funeral Teeth at 53two

Some people might think theatre is meant to keep a polite distance from its audience, you come to watch a show and don’t expect to be pulled right into the action. Funeral Teeth kind of does the opposite to this, it is staged and performed in a way that gets right up in your face and asks what you’re grieving, why and whether you’ve even clocked it yourself yet. Coming to 53two in Manchester this May, a queer tragicomedy from Succulent Theatre. 

Structured in a nonlinear format, a compilation of raw, autobiographical illustrations, the show dives into loss in all its forms. Now we all know the main form of loss, death. But while that is included in the list of reasons we grieve, it is not the only one. Smaller, stranger losses accumulate over a lifetime, milestones you may not have considered yet. Those childhood rituals that just stopped one day and never came back, do you remember the last time your parents gave you a bottle before bed? Or the last time you placed a tooth under your pillow? No, probably not, but it was once such a huge part of your young life and then one day you did it for the very last time.

From deadpan jokes to something quite exposed emotionally, and maybe even physically

Messy nights out with your friends when you were young, those relationships that just slipped through your fingers, things you didn’t realise mattered until they were gone. Funeral Teeth has an approach that feels deliberately unfiltered, with performers shifting between characters, memories and moods, cleverly folding in humour in moments on the brink of heaviness. 

Succulent Theatre’s style leans into confession and contradiction. From deadpan jokes to something quite exposed emotionally, and maybe even physically, you can expect physical theatre and bursts of movement cutting right through the storytelling. If you are a fan of chaotic yet precise theatre and performances that draw directly from lived experiences to create something that lands with a jolt of relatability, then this show is for you.