Bury Me Before You Marry Me
30 July 2026
The Cockpit
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
Bury Me Before You Marry Me is SuSu Production’s newest interactive storytelling show, currently running at the Cockpit theatre until 1 August. Inviting audiences to make decisions along the way, the evolving story of the show is determined by what spectators vote for, making it an audience-driven experience.
In some parts of Asia, there is a deep rooted belief that a soul who dies unmarried must wander the afterlife forever alone. To help their loved ones, some families stage traditional ghost weddings to ensure the departed have someone to keep them company. Sometimes the spouse is a corpse, sometimes they are buried alive. This show follows the tradition of ghost weddings in a fresh and interactive production that leaves the ultimate decisions up to the audience.
There is a direct-to-audience feel about the whole show, which doesn’t always quite work due to the nature of the story, keeping the audience aware that this is a theatrical show rather than a fully immersive experience. Slowly unfolding is a story that feels well written and deeply thought out, with a plethora of forks in the road where a different choice may yield a very different direction for the narrative to go in.
The storytelling feels very complex throughout, which the play seems to be too aware of, unfortunately leading to a sense of repetition at times when ideas and concepts are repeated and exposed several times before they are put to an audience vote. Occasionally actors are a bit too quiet for the whole theatre to hear their intimate interactions with individual audience members, making the show a bit confusing at times.
There are four different levels of immersion available when booking tickets, though throughout the show it isn’t immediately apparent that these actually lead to different levels of interaction, actors seemingly focussing on the first two rows of the audience rather than picking specific people with higher-level tickets. This system might need a bit of an overhaul.
Additionally, gaps between individual scenes are incredibly long, losing momentum and cohesion while stretching the show to 2 and a half hours needlessly. Still, there is a fantastic idea at the heart of this show that just needs a little more development and refinement to get to where it needs to be!
