You Are Going to Die review – nothing is off-limits in this naked meditation on mortality

Southwark Playhouse, London
Adam Scott-Rowley struts, writhes and jiggles his way from ancient Celt to Hieronymus Bosch wretch in this potent cross between physical theatre and performance art

A man sits on a toilet seat under a spotlight, his naked body smeared with chalk and black splodges. He gets up to strut, writhe or jiggle his bits. It might sound like the stuff of an underground fetish club – Adam Scott-Rowley its creature – but it is a physical meditation on mortality and the dying body.

There is no through-narrative, and the show is built on surreal non-sequitur flashes, some arcane and inaccessible, others searing, tragic, comically grotesque. The show’s creator, Scott-Rowley is an astonishingly protean performer who is magnetic to watch. He preens under a spotlight like a young Adonis but then bends to become an elderly woman dancing stiffly or an old man weeping in pain. He might be a figure from a biblical hell in some scenes – a Dantean fiend or one of Hieronymus Bosch’s wretches, silently screaming.