Brighton Fringe 2025
The Angel of Death Will See You Now
Trim Tab Productions
Genre: A Cappella, Musical Theatre
Venue: Brighton Unitarian Church
Festival: Brighton Fringe
Low Down
“After a bungled mugging leaves him on the edge of oblivion, a hapless teacher finds himself face-to-face with the Angel of Death – a merciless quizmaster with a twisted sense of humour. The grand prize? His very soul. The catch? The audience is part of the game. Can you help him outwit the Angel? And just who – or what – is behind the curtain? Brighton’s very own rock musical trailblazers, Trim Tab Productions, return to the Fringe with their most audacious show yet”
Review
A story told and acted in verse and song, with a rock musical feel – unashamedly agit prop, and packed with existential angst handled playfully, verbosely and skilfully. The Angel of Death Will See You Now is gig theatre from James Mannion’s Trim Tab Productions.
At times this theatrical rock musical can feel a bit unhinged, but do not be fooled: there is creative design and intention here. Just like a… erm… creatively designed universe?
Do we live our lives to the full? If we could go back and finish our life properly, would we? What case would we make if an accident cut our lives short and we still had more to do? Could we persuade the Angel of Death to give us one more chance?
This is a charismatic and authoritative show that knows exactly where it is going, and it centres that confident narrative around a lost soul in limbo. It could be any one of us. The show is also a lot of fun.
“Life is the play of form on matter,” said Schiller. But do we play fully? This Fringe show by James Mannion plays fully with its agenda.
The opening song creates an ethereal, in-between atmosphere. The songs vary in style and content, but all carry an earnestness. A Daoist reality is part of the conceit. Is the real meaning that what comes before and what comes after are merely glorious drops in an ocean that ultimately means nothing – with our all-too-brief lives reduced to a single pointless tear drop in the same sea?
Mannion poses more questions than he answers, and the audience is left to do the work – caught up in a kind of game show of reality and unreality. Do we score enough to avoid the doorway into Death, and instead return to the realm of seeking purpose? James, a teacher, believes his story is incomplete.
This is a mash-up of another James – James Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, and Dickens’s Ebenezer. It’s well mashed, with plenty of its own quirk, strangeness and charm. Even when it’s occasionally cheesy and polemical, the cheese is no mild cheddar – it’s a gorgeously stinky camembert of philosophical inquiry, infused with dark and witty comedy.
A rousing musical production with community at its heart. You’ll see nothing quite like it at the Fringe. Groundbreaking not just for breaking new ground, but for breaking old ground too. A rebellious gang-show of a piece, with talent at its core. Groundbreaking for being dark and cynical, light and optimistic, crystal clear in its confusion.
You are a long time dead, in case you didn’t know. The Angel of Death will see you now – and she rather likes daytime TV. It turns out that God’s Waiting Room is neither Eastbourne nor Worthing, but instead a quintessential quiz show.
James was a science teacher. According to James – the victim of a fatal and bungled mugging – he still has more to teach. Theatrically, some parts of the show are currently a bit too restrained. It would benefit from a slight increase in pace here and there. And in an era of multimedia art, there’s scope to modernise the visuals a little more.
There are important questions posed here, as in Mannion’s previous shows. This is a serious inquiry into exams and failure. We are indeed a long time not born and a long time dead. And yet, in the brief interval we call Life, we set our children exams – and most fail. Many lose interest in the journey that follows. Jaded Joshua, mojo extinguished by the age of eleven, becomes a symbol of what’s lost too early.
This is a confessional in limbo. In Life, James was wretchedly contented, consuming news on a smartphone. Yet even in that shell we call Life, there were pearls. Weren’t there? The songs are of fine quality – both in lyrics and melody. Only one number feels too shoehorned into the narrative. The rest serve the story and its emotional arc well. Three performers for the characters of the story with impressive singing voices, charisma and gold standard vocal and verbal skills
To be sent back into Life, James must justify his existence to the Angel of Death, James Mannion ably shakes his fist at the firmament. Musical theatre here becomes his ground-making, ground-breaking sword of truth.
This is groundbreaking work – for merrily messing with the traditional musical form, for daring to create pedagogical, experimental art, for being backed by a full-hearted, earthy choir of mature goddess-angels, and for resurrecting agit prop with wit and resolve in 2025.
