In Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea novels, names are literally magic. To know the true name of a rock, a bird, or even a human, is to have mastery over it, they, or them. This is why, in Earthsea, most people go by a nickname: telling someone your true name is an act of intense love, honour, and trust.

Dian Cathal’s play about Deadnaming – referring to a trans person as their old, pre-transition name – is beautiful, painful, and touches on this old idea of names having extraordinary power.

We arrive as though for a funeral – a funeral for theatre-Dian’s pre-transition self. No spoilers here, but you get everything you might expect at a funeral, and yes, that includes a coffin.

What’s profoundly moving about this show is that everything is treated with utter seriousness and humanity. All the artifice here is used with laser-guided precision and with great care, in search of greater truths.

Even bigoted family members struggling with the “death” of their child, with their familiar arguments and self-pitying, conspiracy-influenced thoughts, are represented and performed with the utmost sincerity.

It is after monologues such as these that the audience almost craves some kind of break, and Cathal – a born performer – is excellent at ratcheting up the emotional tension, then cutting through it with a witty, throwaway comment, or sweet and yet still oddly menacing audience interaction. We are putty in his hands, and the peaks and troughs of this work are perfectly judged. And the tears, either on stage or off, feel as real as real can be.

Also adding to the richness of the world are well-judged asides into the worlds of historical superstition (the left-handed, and therefore the sinister) and Irish folklore (the Changeling Child) which gently remind us that humans have long been finding inventive ways to pillory and destroy those who are different.

Cathal has been performing Deadnamed for a few years now, and I hope he doesn’t stop doing so any time soon, as given the current state of things it would be helpful if everyone in the country saw this, at least once. We could stick it on the NHS, or legislate for it to be mandatory in the same bill when we finally get around to banning conversion therapy.

There’s plenty of Dian Cathal bang for your buck at  Brighton Fringe 2025: as well as this exquisite piece of theatre, Cathal is also performing his stand-up show Trans*Atlantic over at The Walrus.

They almost work as a companion piece to each other. In Trans*Atlantic, the, the stand up’s brain is a whirring, pointing out the various absurdities that come with living as a trans person (and, worse, an American) in today’s febrile, transphobic atmosphere.

And here, in Deadnamed, the absurdities are handled with respect, and tenderness, and love. There aren’t many dry eyes left in the house by the end of this extraordinary half hour.