Death takes her by the hand, leads her to a pool of light at the apron of the stage and she tells us her last moments. There’s light at the end, she says, and dis­ap­pears off stage. I sniff, a little, and hold back tears.

Death Comes To Us All is a remark­ably hon­est, very mov­ing and well-con­struc­ted piece of impro­vised theatre. Only start­ing with char­ac­ter names, the Best on Tap cast takes no prompts from the audi­ence, and moves into a piece of drama, where almost every­one dies in the end.

Death, in this case, is played by Wiremu Tuhi­wai, who casts an impos­ing fig­ure out­side the theatre as he wel­comes us in, but dances around and acts the silent fool on stage – an unsee­able ghost amongst the liv­ing fig­ures – before he grasps a char­ac­ter and leads them to the front of the stage to give them their last moments.

The char­ac­ters are diverse and far between. There’s Han­nah (Clare Ker­ris­on), a fash­ion pho­to­graph­er, who’s des­per­ately in love with her soon-to-be hus­band, Bri­an (Barry Miskim­min), Jane and Alis­on, anoth­er couple who can­’t quite decide which one should be the ‘stay at home wife’ (Katie Whi­taker, Nic­ola Paul­ing), Louise, a barista (Mary Little), Nigel, an IT spe­cial­ist (Geoff Sim­mons) and Michael, a paint­er (Matt Hut­ton) – all who have stor­ies that inter­weave and relate.

Alis­on has to fire Nigel, but isn’t sure if she wants to, Louise’s cafe is the hot­test place to hang out in town, and Jane feels stuck not work­ing at home. Some of them are con­sid­er­ing chil­dren.

And they’re all going to die.

For a piece about death, this show is kindly. The char­ac­ters feel real, and like­able – from Louise’s bub­bly baris­ta­ing, to Jane and Alis­on’s back mas­sages – they all seem like people you’d meet in your life as you wander through Wel­ling­ton.

There are no dra­mat­ic death scenes, or murders, or tear­ful last moments, time is just frozen as the char­ac­ter dies, and resumes on after­wards. It’s bet­ter, in a way. It hurts more, see­ing the next scene start up without the char­ac­ter you liked still in place, but it feels bet­ter too. When one char­ac­ter dies, his absence is obvi­ous, but not appar­ent. When six have died, it’s blatant.

It’s not as though this piece is an abridged epis­ode of Mid­somer Murders, time is more of the killer. A lot of the deaths aren’t spelled out, just remarked upon, and the story ends roughly twenty years after it began.

Under­scored by beau­ti­ful cello work by Sebasti­an Mor­gan-Lynch, the music speeds up as Death is approach­ing, and hov­ers gently in the back­ground when it’s not – more of a remind­er, than of a cau­tion.

Impro­vised theatre can be hit-and-miss in some cases, and it’s usu­ally very fun on either side of that line, but this show was abso­lutely a win for me. It feels real, in some ways, and timely. You con­front your own mor­tal­ity, but not in a way that hurts, exactly. Death holds ten­sion on a knife’s edge, but not in a way that stings.

And I abso­lutely loved it.