Kill Me, at The Sumner, Southbank Theatre - 90 minutes

Naked women, guns, pop and classical music, dancers, roller skating, shadow boxing, athleticism, a shrine and Russian ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky incarnate.

That is what you are in for when you buy a ticket to see Kill Me, Argentine choreographer Marina Otero’s latest step off the deep end.

The central conceit is mental health. In 2022, Otero, who now lives in Spain, suffered a breakdown.

Photos by Marina Caputo

The show starts with a 15-minute home video, when we get to see and hear Otero’s back story, notably how tied she was to her boyfriend, Pablo.

It appears that her whole world revolved around him and acceptance, until he unceremoniously dumped her.

That was even though she trained hard and imagined herself as a sexy avenger. Think Sarah Connor, the female protagonist in the Terminator franchise.

Otero was sad, depressed and jealous. Pablo was a narcissist, who put her down and made her feel weak.

She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

Otero has engaged four women – all of whom, like her, are naked for most of the show – who also have experience with mental disorders.

One by one we hear their stories, while they dance and cavort. They embrace their own madness and the chaos of reality.

The concept behind what we see is “going mad for love”.

The buffoon of the piece is a small statured, balding, rotund man with visions of grandeur.

He believes he is the reincarnation of Nijinsky, the god of dance, who notwithstanding his brilliance on stage was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Kill Me is the third chapter in Otero’s Remember to Live series – her ongoing commitment to making radical work about her life until the day she dies.

To that end, she films much of what she does and then uses it to smear the lines between life and art.

In the first chapter, Fuck Me (2020), she served revenge through the bodies of five naked marines named Pablo.

Two years later, in Love Me, she confronted the violence within, alone on stage.

In Kill Me, drama and outrage are mixed with theatre of the absurd.

It is unquestionably alternative, radical theatre, which resonates with an enthusiastic audience.

I was intrigued and fine with the ideas … with the theatricality, but what I found jarring was when Otero turned the end of the offering into a political diatribe.

That was far from cool and not in keeping with the tenor of the production.

Kill Me is on at The Sumner, Southbank Theatre, until 8th May, 2025 as part of RISING.

To find out more and to buy tickets, go to https://2025.rising.melbourne/program/kill-me