Hot Death Theatre (Lawrence Tucker and Freya Benteaux) first graced the Gothenburg Fringe Festival in 2025 with their show b i r d, which also took home the fringe of the fringe award. This year, Infinilife is back, not with a bird sanctuary, but a multi-level marketing scheme POWERsuit.
Hot Death Theatre are masters of ambiguity. Their wacky dance moves and dry sense of humour are often underpinned with something weird and a bit scary which you can’t quite put your finger on. Benteaux returns as the wide-eyed robotic partner of Tucker who leads the show and delivers the presentation-style performance. Tucker is full of energy, nails the corporate monotone voice and the uncanny ability to not laugh on stage. The duo are so funny it’s a wonder they don’t set each other off. The show has a fair amount of audience participation which means that no two shows are the same. The format never runs dry or gets a bit overdone as the audience makes the show. To stay in character while the audience members come out with something funnier than any of us expected is a valuable skill.
Something I admire about Hot Death Theatre is that their appearances at The Gothenburg Fringe Festival always have some sort of important message underneath all the silliness. They are not only trying to make people laugh, but trying to tell us something. With the complimentary Inifiniberries delivered to us on entry and the further pedalling of the Infiniberries throughout the show actually turned out to be a thoughtful meditation on the rise of medicated people in today’s society. This can also prompt us to reflect on how ethical it really is to charge people for the medications they might need. This was a timely piece that cut through the comedy with a jarring speech right at the end to bring us back to reality and encourage us to ponder the way we live our lives. We are not all puppets to a large corporation. POWERsuit presents a difficult concept and explores it with comedy, physical theatre and just a teaspoon of weirdness to a resounding success.
Written by Ceri Taylor
Photography by Ikumi Maekawa
