The Embalmer

‘Art can be whatever you want it to be.’

A man, a woman and a dead body.

After keeping the world’s most famous corpse in tip-top shape for three decades, Viktor plans to retire and grow roses at his dacha. But an unexpected visitor to his laboratory underneath the Lenin mausoleum has other ideas.

 John Morrison’s new play, set in post-communist Russia, asks universal questions about the nature of art.

‘Where’s Lenin? He’s in Poland.’ (Old Soviet joke)

John Morrison first visited the Lenin mausoleum as a schoolboy in 1965. He worked in Moscow as a journalist before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His last play, A MORNING WITH GUY BURGESS, was staged at the Courtyard Theatre, Hoxton, in 2011.

‘Whatever you say, things like this do happen in the world; not often, but they do happen.’  (Nikolai Gogol, THE NOSE)

THE EMBALMER will be read at Player-Playwrights on 18 November at 7.30 pm.  The venue is the upstairs room of The Three Stags, 67-69 Kennington Road, London SE1 7PZ (3mins walk from Lambeth North tube station).