Death Is Certain, The Basement, Brighton, May 25&26

Death is a subject best avoided with Germans – especially if you have a knack for putting your foot in it.

Luckily Berliner Eva Meyer-Keller is as patient as a pointer.

She needs to be – in her Brighton Festival show she systematically executes 40 cherries (or strawberries if the cherries aren’t ripe) using ever more ambitious methods.

The idea is that by performing violent acts on these powerless cherries in a surgical, efficient, rational (careful now) manner, the audience’s imagination begins to wander.

“The crowd looks and these things seem harmless,” she says. “But in the fantasy of the spectators, it becomes violent.

“The spectators start to project their baggage and their knowledge from the news, films they’ve seen and books they’ve read onto what I do. It becomes an individual experience.”

For 35 minutes she remains silent in front of the crowd. In her white apron she quietly assassinates the fruit on a table which is covered in a white tablecloth.

She uses everyday objects from the kitchen – a knife, a glass, plates, matches, water, sticky tape – and the toolbox.

“I’m not acting in a very dramatic way. It’s functional. The drama is not in my face or voice. It’s put into the head of the spectator rather than me putting it in. Without the fantasy, the spectators’ thoughts, it wouldn’t work.”

The violent deaths and murder are all inspired by stories from fiction and real life. The most dangerous murder is electrocution, closely followed by a lighter, lit and held in front of a spray can.

There are the classics, she says, such as the one where she wraps a cherry in dental floss and hangs it from a plate. She also spray paints one gold to honour Goldfinger.

“I see all the objects in the piece as translation. The voodoo one is inspired by nature. They often make these dolls inspired by human beings, so here I am inspired by what is in our lives and I make a mini version.

“In that sense, voodoo is the essence of the whole piece. I have a piece of red clay and I make a cherry, which relates to the real one, then put some needles in it.”

Cherries are perfect because of their dark-red colour, because they have tender skin and a stone inside.

“They are precious – not like potatoes – like life.”

Food is a perfect metaphor, she says: it is accessible to everybody and these catastrophes are indigestible.

“It’s like I’m trying to build a model or a play with something in my near surroundings to make an attempt to understand this big thing.”

And so to death – it fascinates Meyer-Keller because it is so fundamental and so present, such a part of our everyday life, but has been excluded.

What makes the show interesting is how different nationalities have reacted to it.

“The British, of course, they find things very funny. They chuckle so easily – especially when things start to smell as they get burnt.

“It was very different in Switzerland and Austria.

“In Vienna they seem to think they have the monopoly on dealing with the dark, dramatic side of death.

“They didn’t like that someone could deal with it in a very light way. But that was more about the Viennese than the piece.”

* 9pm, £10. Call 01273 709709