I wish I could tell you all what I just watched after coming out of Dean Jacob’s Funeral, but I am not quite sure. It was certainly meant to be a funeral, and there was a Reverend that was meant to be more of a spiritual guide than religious figure. There were two people in the “audience”, and one other person planted in the “actual” audience. It was meant to be staged and expose the way a funeral is in itself a performance. But I honestly didn’t get it. Created and directed by Jordan Augustine and produced by Francis Culpepper’s Premium Discount Mortuary, Dean Jacob’s Funeral felt like it had some forms of promise and good intentions with the comedy it attempted to produce, but always felt incomplete and hashed up rather quickly. I have mulled over this production in my head for a while, and am attempting to figure out whether I just didn’t get it or if it was meant to be this weird of a production, but I am still not sure as I’m writing this. I can’t say I really recommend this, but I am not going to lambast it. Hopefully, if others see it, they will maybe understand this funeral better than I did. Or perhaps, just like any real-life funeral, it was meant to be as uncomfortable as the funerals we all are forced to go to in our lives.
Dean Jacob’s Funeral. Directed and created by Jordan Augustine. Produced by Francis Culpepper’s Premium Discount Mortuary as part of the 2017 Seattle Fringe Festival (A Project of Theatre of Puget Sound). Runtime: 60 minutes. Theatre Puget Sound Theatre 4, in the Seattle Centet Armory, fourth floor, 305 Harrison St, Seattle. Showtimes: 3/23 6:30PM, 3/25 6:00PM, 3/26 6:45PM, 3/30 8:45PM.