Thinking Time

TO MOVE IN TIME

The Door, Birmingham Rep, Thursday 24^th May 2024

Delivered by Tyrone Huggins, this monologue by an unnamed protagonist concerns everything he would do to make the world a better place if he had the power to move through time.  It’s an interesting premise and one I’m sure we’ve all considered at some point, possibly in a pub after a few jars. If we haven’t, the piece invites us to do so.

At first, he’d go back and change little things, for example making sure a friend didn’t lose his wallet.  Then he considers more life-changing scenarios: saving a child from being crushed by a tram.  So far, so altruistic.

Then he considers money-making ideas: going forward to learn the lottery numbers, to see how stocks pan out on the market… Before moving on to the mischief and mayhem he could create…

But he swiftly realises there’s a knock-on effect, how changing one small detail could impact on the world.  The Butterfly Effect, it’s called.  And so he realises he’ll have to have several versions of himself from the future, each going back and tweaking and fine-tuning… He ties himself up in knots.  Making the world a better place could be a full-time job! And we go giddy trying to keep up with him.

Huggins is effortlessly spellbinding in his oration.  Gradually the character emerges: a nobody or indeed an Everyman.  His thoughts are ones we all might have in that situation.  There is humour, warmth, frustration.  The hour passes quickly, Huggins moving us forward to the future!

It’s a powerful yet playful performance.

The piece is written and directed by Tim Etchells, and while it perhaps doesn’t offer anything we wouldn’t think of for ourselves in these speculations, surely that is the point.  As humans we share a desire to make the world a better place – if not for everyone, then for ourselves at least!  And it is from these kind of speculative fantasies that human advancement is born.  The piece illustrates how the mind works to create possibilities.  Unlike other animals, we can think in the conditional tense, the What-Ifs. 

And that’s what’s got us where we are today.

Fascinating.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Tyrone Huggins comes full circle. (Photo: Hugh Glendenning)