Spoiler Alert! For those who have not seen the play take care, much of the ending is revealed in this review…
Mr Timothy X Attack takes us to an imagined future (what other sort is there indeed?) Humankind seems to have made it’s way to the far flung corners of the galaxy, which intrepid adventures have necessitated the provision of some kind of beacon or lighthouse for the better exploitation of safe galactic interchange. As we know from good old earthly precedent the life of a lighthouse keeper can be one of isolated, even solitary existence.
Being a ‘sci-fi’ play there was a good helping of ‘sci’, which I must confess went over my head and could have been double Dutch for the amount it added to my understanding. But whether this was esoteric stuff or just nonsensical and irrelevant waffle I couldn’t tell.
Jessica Macdonald holds the piece together by keeping a tight grip on her own reality in the play, by which I mean the reality of her character, the quirkily named, Teller Ghent. Performing to a disembodied, computer-generated voice, Hypatia (Laura Dannequin) and a somewhat creepy, somewhat lechy, somewhat threatening presence – Parcival (Derek Frood) – would be taxing for any accomplished actor’s imagination. Having to do this whilst involved in some pretty strange business, peering into holes, fiddling with wires and some inexplicable handle-turning which seemed oddly incongruous on a supposedly futuristic lighthouse, was a thorough test of concentration which she passed with an A star.
Parcival, coming to the end of his stint and presumably having had enough of life on an isolated galactic lighthouse, headed out into the void and apparently committed suicide by going too close to something or other which fried him alive or perhaps atomised him – it all sounded a bit technical. Anyway he did manage to make a rather surreptitious brief return in a manner that suggested it just might have been in Teller’s imagination.
Ms Macdonald’s lithe, diminutive figure conveyed the same deep-space vulnerability as Sigourney Weaver’s, Ripley, in Alien and brought a welcome human dimension to the story. Like Ms Weaver she also conveyed the inner strength that made the character believable in such an unfamiliar environment as she battled not only with the psychological challenges of isolation, but also an impending disaster of apparently cataclysmic proportions, with ‘the voice’ telling us of increasingly apocalyptic human fatalities somewhere ‘out there’ resulting from some kind of malfunction in the lighthouse.
Teller ends by literally holding things together when she uses her body as a conductor between two lengths of cable which didn’t quite meet, but whose connection was vital to the operation of the lighthouse and the salvation of countless humans.
The production benefits from a crack technical display with set, sound and lighting all playing an important part in setting the mood, tempo and out-of-this-worldliness, which gives the play its identity. Such accomplishments however, were no substitute for a script, which seemed derivative and left me disengaged in spite of a commanding central performance. ★★★☆☆ Graham Wyles 23rd April 2016
