To contemplate the inevitability of our own death is to embrace the preciousness of life. Josh Belperio, with a fearlessly self-deprecating wit and a musicality that is equal parts Minchin and Mozart, made this medicine go down in the most delightful way.
Cultures immemorial have struggled with how to resolve the conundrum at the heart of the human condition: the awareness of our own mortality. Buddhists would meditate in a field of decaying corpses; Amazonians would imbibe upon the hallucinogenic ayahuasca in the pursuit of otherworldly insight. In the West, we rarely even use the word 'death': we say he 'passed away', 'she’s gone to another place'. We often are not forced to confront the spectre of our own demise until we are middle-aged, having already spent much of our most vital commodity.
At 21, accomplished and prolific composer and pianist Josh Belperio has attained the unique perspective that comes from surviving a near-death experience, having ruptured his spleen in a bicycle accident. His is an experience that is almost incapable of description; by utilising his remarkable ability to pen a phrase and write a score and with the help of a talented stage crew, 'Scarred For Life' surgically dissected the trauma while leaving the audience in stitches.
Despite the confronting theme of Josh’s show, he skilfully weaved between the shadows and the light. His second number ‘I Stuffed Up’ was a jaunty comic jingle about his life as a klutz, but this was immediately followed by ‘Rushing’, a haunting spoken word retelling of his accident underscored by a classically inspired piano accompaniment that transcribed the indescribable.
The mood would shift not only between songs, but also impressively within songs too. In ‘I.C.U’, Josh imbued those three letters with three disparate meanings. 'I.C.U' served a narrative purpose: he found himself in the Intensive Care Unit. Phonetically, the term is equivalent to “I see you”, which is humorous when applied to a discussion of the rear nudity that comes with hospital gowns but is poignant when related to his first glimpse of loved ones post-op.
Similarly, 'Watching Me Pee Into A Bottle’ is perhaps the most deceptively-titled love song ever written. It caused tears of laughter and tears of sentimentality to simultaneously track down your face. The meaning of each of his nine original compositions, though, was substantially heightened by the ingenuity of the lighting and the staging. Audience members were given surgical caps to wear, Josh’s diminutive frame cast an immense silhouette across the plush red curtain behind him, the lights transformed the intimate space into a sterile operating room and a drug induced hallucination.
Director Matthew Briggs, Josh’s partner and a central character in the story, and Lighting Designer Mark Oakley are to be commended for creating a spectacle befitting the quality of the songs. One of Josh’s final thoughts before undergoing life-saving surgery was “what about all the music I still have to write?” After the show’s triumphant and defiant finale, audiences were asking “imagine all the music we would have been deprived of hearing?” Fortunately, I think we will be hearing much more from Josh Belperio for many years to come.
★★★★★
