Raw and imperfect, this show puts a taboo subject centre stage and humanizes it with great sensitivity.
There are some theatre productions that entertain, some that challenge and others that simply ask their audience to listen. Right Before I Go, Stan Zimmerman’s deeply personal exploration of suicide and mental health, belongs firmly in the third category. It is playing at the Soho Theatre for a limited season following a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Zimmerman says: “After the suicide death of my good friend, Kevin Gill, I was at a loss about how to process this. Seeing so much shame around the topic, I decided to create a play in the vein of The Vagina Monologues, easily produced with actors on stools, reading the script from music stands. My hope is that this will create much needed discussion about a very complicated issue. I’m thrilled that London audiences will get the chance to see the show straight after our Edinburgh Festival run, particularly during September, which is World Suicide Awareness Month.”
The production offered a confronting, compassionate and occasionally uneven evening, but one whose importance ultimately outweighs its imperfections.
Drawing on real suicide notes and personal testimonies, Zimmerman’s play gives a voice to people from remarkably different backgrounds. These include young people, veterans, celebrities and public figures. The result is less a conventional play than a staged act of remembrance.
The performers sit with scripts in hand, allowing the words themselves to take centre stage rather than disguising them beneath elaborate scenery or theatrical effects. This stripped-back approach can be powerful. There is something unsettling about hearing someone’s final words delivered with so little mediation. Director Abigail Morris wisely keeps the staging minimal, while projected names and photographs give individual stories a human face. At its best the production creates moments of extraordinary stillness, forcing the audience to confront the humanity behind the statistics of suicide.
The cast on 5th September – Edward DeRuiter, Emrhys Cooper, Jessica Lia Berry, Lucy Speed and Zimmerman himself – approach the material with sensitivity. Lucy Speed is particularly affecting, bringing warmth and emotional clarity to her characters, while Zimmerman’s involvement gives the evening an unmistakably personal quality. His presence as both creator and performer makes the production feel less like an abstract theatrical exercise and more like an act of grief transformed into advocacy.
However Right Before I Go is not without shortcomings. The staged-reading format occasionally feels a little under-rehearsed, and some performances lack the polish one might expect from a finished West End production. The writing also occasionally reaches for humour when the material might benefit more from simply being allowed to breathe.
Yet these reservations do little to diminish the central achievement. Crucially the performance does not simply end when the lights go down. A post-show conversation involving the cast, audience and two mental health professional extends the work beyond the theatre, encouraging discussion rather than leaving audiences alone with difficult emotions.
Right Before I Go may not be flawless theatre but it is sincere, compassionate and purposeful. In an era when difficult conversations about suicide can still be surrounded by shame and silence, there is considerable value in a production willing to put those conversations centre stage.
There is a rotating cast and the show continues on 9th September before concluding on 10th September. Tickets can be purchased here.