Melbourne Theatre Company’s play Dying: A Memoir is a captivating new piece, anchored by a spectacular performance from Genevieve Morris.
The play is a new adaptation of Cory Taylor’s 2016 memoir of the same name. Written in the last years of her life, as she faced terminal melanoma, it charts the progression of her disease and the progression of her feelings about death.
Early on, she’s still processing the loss of her own mother, and faces difficult decisions about when to tell her family about her own diagnosis. Later, fears of being trapped in pain and unable to choose her own end come to the fore.
The memoir was adapted by writer Benjamin Law, a friend of Cory’s. Law’s adaptation honours her work and captures her voice beautifully. The prose is free of adornment and fuss – simple, stark words that are fitting for the simple, stark truths being discussed.
Genevieve Morris’s performance is extraordinary. Alone on stage, the only thing moving against a stark black backdrop, she’s transfixing. Like Law’s text, her portrayal of Cory is stripped back and pragmatic. Despite the weighty subject matter, she holds on to a down-to-earth sensibility that makes her character feel all the more human.
Morris also embodies various characters throughout the play. She switches effortlessly, sometimes mid-conversation, to depict Cory’s mother, who has dementia, her sister, doctors, and fellow travellers at a voluntary assisted dying meeting.
The subtle physical and vocal shifts illustrate a skilled artist at the height of her powers; the folds of Cory’s aged mother’s neck and broader Aussie accent of an older generation; the languid gesticulation of the counsellor; the zipped-together legs of an older woman carrying heavy emotional burdens. Each depiction alone is powerful.
Jean Tong directs the play with a creative staging that invites the audience in. The black stage is adorned only with a half-dozen plush red chairs. They’re the very same as those we sit in, immediately breaking down the boundaries between audience and stage.
That sense of equality is further heightened by the opening. Morris enters from the side and chats to a few audience members on the way to the stage. In other scenes, she addresses the audience directly. “Hey YOU!” she seems to say. “How do you really feel about death?”
In that opening, Morris promises that we will laugh and cry. There’s certainly laughter (her sardonic asides are irresistible), but I found Dying: A Memoir less cry, more cri de cœur. The enormity of death is often quickly reduced to a smaller, more tractable issue: seeking to avoid a bad (painful, slow, drawn-out) death.
Dying: A Memoir runs to 29 November at Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio. 100 St Kilda Road Southbank Vic 3006.
Tickets: https://tickets.mtc.com.au/production/18888
Website: https://www.mtc.com.au/plays-and-tickets/whats-on/season-2025/dying-a-memoir/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/melbtheatreco/
Photo credits: Pia Johnson
