James Doe reviews Timmy Thompson Is Dead and, despite some pitfalls, finds it an enjoyable experience…

“The characterization within the piece was consistent and far more successfully plotted”

James Morton’s ‘Timmy Thompson is Dead’ follows the well-trodden path of student writing; dealing with death, an incident that has disrupted the relationships within a group, and a realization that we are all different but essentially the same. The play itself is, in many ways, a reworking of Satre’s ‘No Exit’: three girls are trapped in a hell-like room, forced to confront the different manifestations of a shared guilt. This strict adherence to purpose and meaning in the writing can often come at the expense of narrative. Morton’s piece seemed to fall foul of a desire for epigrammatist writing and glib philosophy, ‘How much time we have, and how much we waste.’ Add to this a slightly trite rehashing of Macbeth as one of the characters recalls attempting to remove the soot from her hands: ‘all the perfumes of Arabia couldn’t erase what I’d done’ and you find the main weakness with this play; it didn’t seem to have anything particularly new to say.

The characterization within the piece was consistent and far more successfully plotted and yet by employing types, Morton creates an added encumbrance to the audience’s emotional investment in both character and play, this was most obvious in emotionally explosive scenes that felt essentially flat (through no fault of the actors I should add). For example, a scene involving a  funeral procession; though visually intriguing, it lacked emotional investment in the deceased character. I was aware I was looking at a coffin, I was aware other characters were sentimentally looking at a coffin and I was aware Timmy Thompson was dead in a coffin, but there was little feeling beyond that.

There are themes, character traits and an incident, but the play was undoubtedly lacking a well-plotted narrative and without this narrative we are unable to engage fully with either the characters or their emotions. The piece seemed to stumble through a series of thoughts and themes but lacked a central coherence or end message. This was confused even further by an epilogue absolving the characters of any wrong-doing and essentially undermining much of what had come before.

“Morton demonstrates a great deal of promise, offering some very witty lines..”

Perhaps this is too harsh a criticism; it is a student-play after all, and if D21’s most recent Freshers’ Play review is anything to go by, there is a general belief that student theatre should be judged by a measuring stick entirely of its own.  I feel that to do this would be of disservice to the piece. Despite falling into many of the ‘student’ pitfalls, Morton demonstrates a great deal of promise offering some very witty lines and a good ear for dialogue, setting the piece above the typical student DDF fare.

Undoubtedly the strongest element of this production was the acting. Elizabeth Rose O’Connor excelled in creating a complicated and nuanced performance, successfully contrasting an innocent vulnerability with the determined strong-will of Natasha Cowley’s Adele. Cowley was equally successful in her characterization and demonstrated a great comic ability, while Christina Ulfsparre was consistent and intriguing in her performance.

The director too should be commended for staging such a believable relationship between the actors and encouraging individually refined performances. Unfortunately, there was a tendency for these performances to be hindered by some slightly clumsy blocking. The introduction of physical manifestations of the characters’ recollections resulted in a cluttering of the stage and often confused the focus.

An area of theatre-making occasionally forgotten by reviewer and audience alike is the technical department. I’m afraid to say in this production it was hard to forget. It was bad. The lighting design was weak and confused: the overly stylized embellishments of the lighting belied the naturalist approach of both the writing and direction. The lighting cues were always premature or belated and fundamentally distracted from any tension the performance of Morton’s script tries to build.

Overall the piece was enjoyable, it just felt like we’d been there many times before. That said, I do hope Inkblot will continue with its endeavors to stage original work – something that the rather tired and formulaic Durham theatre scene is in desperate need of.

James Doe