Charon Goes West at The Courtyard Theatre

A caveman, a pirate, a granny, and an AI step onto a boat. Or their souls do, anyway.

CHARON GOES WEST is a new dark comedy for the London stage. Fifty minutes, ten souls, and one man who has absolutely no idea why his cosmic debt keeps going up.

Charon is a ferryman. His friends call him Charlie, or they would if he had any friends. Every day (or whatever passes for a day outside of time) he picks up the recently deceased at the eastern docks and rows them west to their final destination. He knows, when each soul boards, that they're headed for the Bad Place. But if they can face themselves honestly over the course of the crossing, they can change their fate. Charlie wants them to win. He just can't do it for them.

What he can do is provide unmatched customer service. And this comes in the form of people-pleasing, mirroring his client-souls, contorting himself to the point of unrecognisability. To cope, he hits the coffee, flask, and cigs on rotation between rides. Whatever it takes to get through the day.

His debt, tracked on a glowing monitor upstage like a cosmic game show, keeps climbing. He doesn't understand why. We begin to suspect.

Then his girlfriend boards. And by the end, his own mother.

This is a play about the gap between being nice and being honest, and what each one costs. It's also about the liminal space between life and death and the places we need to go to come home.

Welcome to the River Styx. Step in for the ride of your life.