Edinburgh Fringe 2025
The Cadaver Palaver
Bare Witness Theatre Company.
Genre: Theatre
Venue: Summerhall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Fans of Sherlock Holmes and the 39 Steps will love this stylish tribute.
Review
Bennett Cooper Sullivan, a self-confessed gentleman adventurer and rakish raconteur, takes us on a rattling good yarn in the style of a John Buchan thriller, with an implausible but hilarious plot that, like the 39 Steps takes us from London to Edinburgh, with a mummy mausoleum and elements of Burke and Hare. The “Boys Own” adventure genre is very strong, with elements of Conan Doyle and Jack London joining the fun. Cooper Sullivan is also a lady’s man, and, with a twinkle in his eyes and a flirtatious attitude, he makes clear it’s not just upper lip that is stiff.
Recently escaped from a makeshift prison in Kandahar, our hero becomes caught up in the Egyptomania craze, and needs the help of an old friend, now a highly successful and preeminent surgeon in Edinburgh. (The performance in the old Anatomy Lab at Summerhall really adds to the atmosphere.) The pleasure in this show is in the physicality of the actor Christopher Samuel Carroll, energetic and almost contortionist, without once dropping audibility. He knows when to take the audience laughter and then continue with the tale. It is a highly seductive performance, with the clipped English tones of the period inhabiting perfect sartorial elegance. This hero is an early prototype of James Bond, putting the “cad in cadaver”, and each improbable escape is joyously topped by the next. His sexual freedom is perhaps a little too forthright for the age, but they are delivered with such roguish charm, we feel neither shaken or stirred. We are all complicit in the snowiness of his story, he is convinced that Iraq and Afghanistan will, in the future, be countries that will enjoy many years of peace.
Written by Carrol, this is master storytelling, gripping and enjoyable from start to finish. There is a wonderful, and beautifully timed, running gag about chopping hands off, (trust me, not as gruesome as it sounds), that is brought to a satisfying conclusion, and no strand of the story is left dangling. Playing at 10.15 in the morning, this is the shot of caffeine you need to start your day.
