WINGED HORSE suggest that this play by Tom McGrath ''should be
considered a Scottish premiere''. I have a memory of reviewing it in
1978 in a Traverse production with lots of tinfoil, but this version is
''substantially rewritten and updated''. It is an intriguing concept
that the future can be updated, since the piece still deals with the
sci-fi proposition of what happens when all forms of species lose the
secret of propagation.
Nothing grows. Women have disappeared. Farewell sweet world. What we
are left with is a capsule detached in space. An aimless astronaut
(Graeme Robertson) takes ballroom dance lessons from his butler (Andrew
Dallmeyer). They banter like Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. They enact
fruitless rituals with seeds, water, and earth, but they can't have read
the packet very carefully. If this is Eden they're going to have to bite
into a billiard ball.
Enter the female. An android, she might be quite approachable if you
could manoeuvre past the power pack clamped to her groin, the Madonna
knitting machine cones on her chest and the gymnastic crab that she
performs on Astro's circular bed. The inference is that she has a pulse.
Michelle Gomez is well cast as an android. Ruby has a programmed
insincerity in virtually every gesture, voice and expression she makes.
She is like switching channels by zapper. She might be the perfect
answer for reduced attention spans, but will she save humankind?
She will probably make many people's evening, as far as this
production is concerned, but it is a puzzle why anyone would want to
revive this piece in the first place. Director Eve Jamieson has shaped
it into a sharper piece of theatre. It seems shorter, at least. Its
necessity still escapes me, apart from the excuse to play some Blade
Runner music, but maybe it's me who needs to be substantially rewritten
and updated.
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