Gilbert Is Dead

Robin French's extraordinarily imaginative, sometimes surrealist trip into the Victorian era examined scientific and religious obsession and the pain of bereavement against the backdrop of the revolutionary theories of Darwin, premiering at the atmospheric Hoxton Musical Hall in Whitechapel.

A Victorian scientific mystery play: a clever, funny and moving portrait of grief, faith and science. The plot follows Lucius Trickett, London’s most celebrated taxidermist, who finds himself in cahoots with Queen Victoria and our hero Gilbert Shirley, to disprove Darwin’s theory of evolution with a stuffed specimen of the mysterious ghost loris. But what happens when the missing link goes missing?