Synopsis

In Leonardo’s Last Supper, Peter Barnes explores a theatrical mode in which everything is simultaneously tragic and ridiculous. A family of undertakers in a medieval charnel house prepare to bury Leonardo da Vinci; disposing of the Renaissance genius will be a lucrative coup for the family business, and so the atmosphere is jovial as they dress up as plague doctors and bicker around the corpse. But their dreams of prosperity and perfumed gloves are interrupted when the health of the deceased polymath suddenly improves.