The National Theatre

A Matter of Life and Death—how do I describe it? A deconstructed musical about war, true love, and death featuring smoking nurses on bicycles, a burning bed, a flying dead Norwegian magician, a camera obscura, heavenly bureaucracy, and English fog in which the ending was decided by the flip of a coin (the ending is different on different nights depending on that coin toss). I was a little tramatized by the ending (we saw the "sad" ending), so I ended up drowning my grief in Cherry Garcia ice cream.
However, I have a lot to think about. The play gave us hope by showing that death is not a terrible thing. At the same time, the randomness and futility and pointless deaths of war are cause for despair.
The Reporter is an exploration of why star BBC coorespondent James Mossman killed himself. I was disappointed in the actor who played Louis, but otherwise I am again experiencing catharsis. Does our "real self" lie somewhere beneath the layers of deception that we take on, or are the layers what we really are?