Synopsis

After Life begins on yet another Monday. A new group of deceased people known as “The Guided” enter into a bureaucratic institution where they will spend the following week. The Guided are assigned a staff member as a Guide to assist them with the task of choosing a single memory for them to take into eternity. By the end of the week, the Guides stage physical reimaginings of their clients’ memories in a final performance before the end. The process is difficult; it provokes chaotic reactions and heartbreaking moments. But when their humanity gets in the way, the Guides and the Guided find themselves breaking the rules and learning to accept change as time fades away. Jack Thorne’s After Life is a story of loss, reminiscence, and the beauty of letting go. The Guides and the Guided are witty and whimsical, yet compassionate and authentic, making this a play crafted to reflect us, the audience, as it prompts us to question what it means to truly live and how we want to be remembered.

Nick Carraway, a young newcomer to Long Island, narrates their world of obsession, greed, and danger, as Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, passionately pursues the elusive Daisy Buchanan. Who is in love with who, who is really in power, and what happens when we forget that the world we live in is bigger than the world we percieve. The breathtaking glamour and decadent excess of the Jazz Age come to the stage in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, and in Simon Levy’s adaptation, approved by the Fitzgerald Estate.