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.