Review: THE UNDYING at Soho Theatre

Date: 10/02/26

Stars: 4

The Undying sounds, on paper, like it might be a big supernatural concept piece. A pill. Immortality. The temptation to cheat death. The kind of premise that could easily tip into something larger-than-life or overdone.

But the play is much more interested in something smaller and sadder than that.

The Undying isn’t really about living endlessly. It’s about what people do when life starts to feel unliveable. It becomes a play about marriage, about dependency, about the strange aftermath of loss where you’re still functioning, still speaking, but something has changed underneath everything.

A pill called TwiceLife™ lets you wake up younger every time you take it. Amba swallows first, and suddenly life opens up again. Prav refuses, at least at the start. And that simple difference becomes the crack that everything starts to spill through.

It does take a moment to fully understand the rules of the world, and in the opening scenes you might find yourself catching up slightly, working out what’s real, what’s metaphor, and what exactly the pill is doing. But once it clicks, the play becomes far more emotionally layered than the premise first suggests, and that’s thanks to Rea Dennhardt Patel’s writing, which is smart because it doesn’t treat the sci-fi idea like the main event; the pill is almost the least interesting part.

What matters is what it does to a marriage when one person wants to go forward by going backwards, and the other isn’t sure they can survive another version of the past. It becomes a play about grief, dependency, love, and the strange ways people try to outpace pain.

It’s a two-hander, and it really lives or dies on performance. Vaishnavi Suryaprakash and Akaash Dev Shemar make everything feel completely natural, never overplayed, never pushed. You’re not watching a concept play, you’re watching two people trying to work out what they still owe each other.

Imy Wyatt Corner’s direction keeps it moving with emotional clarity, even when the story refuses to unfold neatly. And it shouldn’t. Grief isn’t tidy. Love isn’t tidy. Second chances are only comforting for about five minutes before they start to feel frightening.

One of the loveliest elements of the production is the live music. Real instruments in the room give the show a heartbeat, adding warmth and texture throughout.

And then there’s the ending.

It lands with a proper jolt, but it isn’t there just to shock. It’s strangely beautiful, because in the end everyone gets what they wanted… and you’re left sitting with the question of whether that’s actually a gift.

Everyone gets what they want, which is not the same as a happy ending.

The Undying is funny in places, sad in others, and unexpectedly affecting. A love story in reverse, yes, but also a reminder that you can’t rewrite your life without rewriting the people inside it too.

Horror with the volume turned down.

And all the more effective for it.

The Undying plays at Soho Theatre until 10th February 2026: https://sohotheatre.com/events/the-undying/