In a darkened theatre, spotlights pick up small details, significant, if somewhat abstruse. A small white boat plies the river Styx, gently undulating on the calm current towards Hades. In the bow of the boat sit two figures, the nervous Singer, in white shirt and barefoot. Opposite him, Death, in black. But this Death is no Grim Reaper; young and agile, he writhes in ecstatic agony, shirtless and androgynous, tormenting the Singer. This Death is as much a creature of the erotic photographs of Bill Henson as the creepiness of the Gothic portraits of Caspar David Friedrich.

More Guilty than the Poet. Photograph © Daniel John Purves

From the outset, the theme of this new theatre piece (co-created by Robert Macfarlane and Joshua Hoare) is Death. Not just any death, but the death of each and every one of us, and the death of one figure in particular, Franz Schubert. As a young gay man, the composer is said to have contracted syphilis, the disease which was to kill him in 1828 at the age of 31. According to many scholars, he composed over 600 songs for solo voice and piano during that...