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.