Review: Before I’m Dead, The Glitch

Myla Carmen as Zara in Before I’m Dead, The Glitch, Photo: Phoebe Dyer There is a veil of death hanging over the theatres around The Cut in London. Care at the Young Vic is set in a nursing home and about the end of life, and a few minutes’ walk away at The Glitch is Before I’m Dead, a play about a terminally ill teen. But the two couldn’t be more different productions. Zara (Myla Carmen) is 17 and likely won’t make 18 because of a brain tumour. She is assigned a therapist, Stuart (Pete Ashmore), through a Make-A-Wish-style charity. Her wish is to broadcast her own eulogy on the radio, but it is not as easy as it sounds. There are broadcast rules and parental permissions to gain, which Stuart, reluctantly at first, helps her navigate. While Care has the slow pace of its care home residents, Before I’m Dead, while still considered, has an energy that is part youthful verve, part desperation. It makes the bad days Zara encounters all the more stark. Light and sound treatments indicate…