POSSIBLE WORLDS. To 26 October.

Glasgow

POSSIBLE WORLDS
by John Mighton

Tron Theatre To 26 October 2002
Tue-Sat 8pm
Audio-described 24 October
Runs 1hr 30min No interval

TICKETS 0141 552 4267
Review Timothy Ramsden 12 October

Fine performances in a sympathetic production of a play that deliberately offers more questions than answers.When plays have ideas, those ideas either coalesce, so disparate-seeming material eventually forms a clear picture, or they spark off to form a pattern of cerebral fireworks. Here, it's not a theory or thesis, but the sheer excitement of possibilities that stimulates. As its title suggests, Canadian maths-man Mighton's play comes in the second category.

Adrian Osmond's Tron production is smoother than the play's London premiere at the Finborough Theatre, but that smaller-scale version's by no means totally outclassed by Glasgow.

It's not helpful - if not very harmful - to translate the action to Britain (Scots-sounding police, English sounding Academic and business people). A few minor dialogue details apart, it's mainly the feel that's more transatlantic than British.

But Jon Bausor's compartmentalised revolve-set (though it leads to some audible scene-shifting behind the walls) makes a point about the parallel-existences which inform the play. George meets Joyce: in one life she's an academic who's not interested in knowing him; in another a businesswoman who's very keen. Apparently they knew each other as children - George remembers but Joyce - or one Joyce - doesn't. And anyway, who can account for the consciousness being a reliable guide - especially when, Stoppard-like, the different couplings mix up?

Here, we're back to the old philosophical conundrum: can we be certain we're not just the product of someone - or something's imagination? Life could be a dream. As it is for Louise - the rat's brain imagining her own tasty life at the beck of a scientist's electrical impulses.

So the meaning of life - and an inquiry into imagination - in 90 minutes. Mighton craftily uses genre motifs - a police investigation into brain-scalping murders, romantic drama. These then tail away to reveal the real identity of his purpose. And it's part of that identity that it leaves us gasping at might-bes rather than contented with a solution.

It works because - assuming we are all human and not figments of electro-shots in some almighty cosmic jelly - he makes his people matter. It is a chill when we learn who the fast-track risk assessor really is, there is a pleasant warmth as George and Joyce finally cling together on a rocky beach muttering loving promises of possibilities in a life together.

Osmond should have restrained Damien Thomas from indulging a few cliche mad-scientist hints, but the cast play finely, Billy Riddoch and John Kielty functionally contrasted as world-weary boss cop and slow, learning-aspirant junior.

Stephen Hogan provides a sense of the everyday collar-and-tie man provoked by a repeated sense of something beyond his daily existence, be it love or the cosmos. And Raquel Cassidy excels as Joyce - or Joyces -in both uninterest and fondness. With her too, the heartbeat and imaginative intelligence finally win over the smart-clothed efficiency of the day job.

Thanks to the unravelling ideas, and the aptly braked-back emotions in the playing, these scenes are never schmaltzy. Thanks to them, too, the police-procedural line doesn't so much end perfunctorily as give up the ghost to Mighton's larger, more fundamental mystery. A winner.

Berkley: Billy Riddoch
Williams: John Kielty
George: Stephen Hogan
Joyce: Raquel Cassidy
Penfield: Damien Thomas

Director: Adrian Osmond
Designer: Jon Bausor
Lighting: Paul Sorley
Sound: John Scott

2002-10-13 13:37:32