Arena Theatre

Arena Theatre presents a stage adaptation of Powell and Pressburger's film of the same name by Jonathan Hyde and Jonathan Rea.

A mistake occurs in The Place You Go After You Die, and the airman Peter Carter lives when he shouldn’t. This makes matters a bit complicated, as Peter meets a girl and falls in love in the few extra hours of life that he’s given.

When asked to die a day later, Peter argues that because of someone else’s mistake, “I am now in love. I’m in an entirely different position from last night. I expected to die, I was ready to die. It’s not my fault that I didn’t.” In order to live, “Peter is forced to take himself, and the heavenly authorities, to the Universal Court of Appeal” where life and death, and the choices made in regards to them, are debated and deliberated.

In the end, as A Matter of Life and Death has two endings (one in which he lives, and one in which he dies), Peter Carter’s fate is literally decided by the toss of a coin.