{shortcode-fbc487c7c4310ebc90f1e93c59a18705887d5de2}

In his one-man show, comedian and actor Chris Grace analogizes death to the children’s game Sardines. In the game, he describes, one child hides while the rest attempt to find them. As each child succeeds, they silently pack one by one into the cramped, dark space. Finally, there’s only one child left, roaming the house and wondering where everyone has gone. To Grace, watching five family members die before he turned 50 felt like that.

Despite its dour subject matter, Grace’s show “Sardines (a comedy about death)” at The Huntington is short and sweet. In under an hour, he goes through how some of the most important — and complicated — people in his life died.

Everything about “Sardines” is understated and honest. The show does not intend to leave audiences sobbing or impart a grand message about death — something that Grace states outright. Experiencing loss forced him to look for an answer, only to find platitudes about “living in the moment.” Surviving after that loss taught him that those platitudes were right.

The Huntington’s more intimate Maso Studio performance space features no decoration for “Sardines.” A blue light washes the back curtain, with a white stool positioned in front. Grace pantomimes controlling a slideshow, gesturing towards the plain curtain. He narrates what would be on the slides, alluding to the ridiculous nature of imagining something so relatively simple to create in real life. The most important “slide” is a family photo depicting his mom, sister, brother, and partner — all of whom died within 10 years of the photo being taken. His father, the fifth person to pass away, is noticeably absent. Grace’s account of how difficult it is to grieve someone you’re estranged from is one of the most poignant moments in the show.

Grace’s performance never feels “performative.” Dressed in all white, he avoids the exaggerated movements and intonation of a typical stand-up comedian. The jokes blend into monologue seamlessly, never announcing their presence. Grace’s ability to solicit laughs with a relatively restrained delivery is integral to the tone of the show. Many assume that stand-up comedians lie for the sake of jokes and thus take their anecdotes with a grain of salt. If the audience suspected Grace of pandering for laughs, they might harbor suspicion about his stories of grief. Grace never gives cause for this. “Sardines” is not Chris Grace’s stand-up set. “Sardines” is the personal work of Chris Grace, a person who happens to be very funny.

This restraint extends to the more serious content. Grace recounts the tragic episodes with little fanfare or hysterics. He grants each moment the weight it deserves, but never wallows even when describing something as traumatic as futilely performing CPR on his partner. Just as things feel too heavy, he pulls back from the ledge with an unexpected joke. The show does what it encourages: remains present, lighthearted, and hopeful.

Grace doesn’t stop himself from indulging in sillier moments, which provides a welcome levity. Reenacting what he’d do as a child listening to his favorite song, Donna Summers’ “MacArthur Park,” he runs around the stage in circles before dramatically dying. Later, he guides the audience through an a cappella rendition of Rihanna’s “Please Don’t Stop the Music.” At first the group sings tentatively, but by the fourth “Mama-say, mama-sa, ma-ma-ko-ssa” everyone sings with their chest. Here too, Grace uses comedy to force the audience to live in the moment.

Towards the show’s conclusion, Grace plays an audio clip of his mother reading a poem that she wrote. The poem itself is a sweet meditation on the meaning of life, but more moving is the sound of her voice, lilting, soft, and low. After the otherwise low-tech performance, the audio-clip is simultaneously jarring and comforting, even though Grace preemptively announces that an audio cue will play within the first few minutes of the performance. The clip reminds us that even when people die, they leave traces of themselves behind. More importantly, the clip reminds us to savor what we can while there’s still time. Fittingly, only now is the aforementioned photo revealed, previously hidden behind a curtain to the side.

“Sardines” is a funny, poignant meditation on one man’s experience with death. There is no extraordinary revelation at the end of the show but that may be its most realistic revelation altogether. Death is anything but extraordinary. It’s a children’s game. Those who have left you are like the hidden Sardines players, awaiting you. The best we can do is appreciate what a privilege it is to play.

“Sardines (a comedy about death)” runs at The Maso Studio at The Huntington Theatre through Nov. 16.

—Staff writer Ria S. Cuellar-Koh can be reached at ria.cuellarkoh@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @riacuellarkoh.