Inspired by her own mother’s funeral when she was a young adult, Izzy Tennyson (Grotty, Bunker Theatre; Brute, Edinburgh Fringe, Soho Theatre) returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with a wickedly dark play about the absurdity of rigid Western ideas of grief and class. The Great Ruckus, produced by Etch Theatre, brings to life how death strums dangerously at family and class relations.
Two sisters are navigating their way through their mother’s funeral, dutifully marching to Death’s drumbeat, when the warm embrace of family turns into a seething snake-pit of selfabsorbed relatives. As grandparents argue over whether the funeral reception will be a celebration of Marks and Spencer catering packs or a piece of Gothic tragedy, the sisters succumb to their own bad behaviour. Everyone seems to think this funeral is about them.
In this razor-sharp observational piece, Jo and Ida’s delicate relationship cracks under the pressure of the family coming to mourn. Events like weddings and funerals force together people with different temperaments, motives, and backgrounds. In the same family, some might be going up in the world, others going down or side-ways; some resentful of upward mobility, and others embarrassed by their relatives. From the writer of award-winning Brute and critically acclaimed Grotty, The Great Ruckus gives a modern twist on the social satire and dynastic dynamics of Thackeray and Dickens.
Izzy Tennyson comments, This show has pushed me to a whole new creative challenge: it will be accompanied by a projection of original artwork of characters and scenes drawn by myself, in a savagely satirical style inspired by Ralph Steadman and Ronald Searle. Death and grief are serious subjects but life doesn’t stop being funny when people die, any more than it stops being serious when you laugh. The Great Ruckus embraces that.
