Days of future past… Dark Sublime, Trafalgar Studios

“Nowadays you’re lucky if you get a rehearsal… which is very unlike life, if you think about it, which is all fucking rehearsal and no fucking performance…”

At various points in my life I have indeed felt the pull of old “fantasy television” and ended up buying not just box sets of old TV comforts but also annuals and toys. Now these are not just for me you understand, they’re for my son who I long ago infected with Star Wars and Doctor Who… and now he too is at the age when the originals were best

Yet, far from being nostalgia pick-me-ups, the best science fiction has always presented a mirror to our current lives, highlighting the dangers, just around the corner. Thus, in watching a near future world conquered by Cybermen or Daleks we realise how much of our current moral strength (largely) prevents this happening. Science fiction and science fantasy are concerned about the future and that concern is also very much for now and not later.

But, is TV science fiction the “answer” is it a way to lead your life either as a performer or watcher? Michael Dennis’ new play examines the role of fandom in revealing and obscuring eternal truths. It’s a massive subject and even with the play’s running length not one to be exhausted in a single evening but the characters are warm and the interjections of sections from the “actual” show with Simon Thorp channelling equal parts Tom Baker and Paul Darrow as Vykar and Mark Gatiss in his (recorded) dream role as Orac’s cheekier cousin Kosley the Computer, make sure that Dark Sublime carries the atmospherics of its inspiration.

Marina Sirtis (credit Scott Rylander)

On top of this of course we have your actual sci-fi royalty in Marina Sirtis – Star Trek, The Next Generation's Deanna Troi - as Marianne and she does not disappoint especially in giving us a rounded character who is more than just the sum of her previous parts… As her character says: “It paid the mortgage – helped pay the mortgage – but it’s not the one bright book of my life! I’ve played parts over the whole of my career… Portia, Rosalind!”

Marianne is not Marina whose career was, literally (ha-ha) beyond stratospheric in the hugely successful TNG but she is very relatable as the jobbing actor who has made her career with runs in Emmerdale, supplemented by workshops. She’s a battle-hardened pro ever ready with a quip and a put down for friend and foe alike especially her best friend Kate (a radiant Jacqueline King – who has done a stint in Doctor Who herself as Donna’s Mum).

Marina gets some real zingers to deliver and doesn’t miss a beat, it’s a play that clearly resonates but whilst the situation is, we assume, a familiar one, the story digs a lot deeper into our relationships with each other and, specifically the ones we love.

Kwaku Mills (credit Scott Rylander)

Kate has a new girlfriend, Suzanne (Sophie Ward, subtle and sophisticated as you'd expect) a younger woman and one of unhindered emotional intelligence and with a forthright wisdom that seems to allude the quicksilver Marianne. The latter doesn’t approve but won’t really be specific about why; jealousy or loneliness or just everything.

Marianne breaks the golden rule and agrees to meet a young fan, Oli (excellent newcomer, Kwaku Mills, energetic and instantly likeable) a twenty one year old man who has found a great deal of solace in the show she made 35 years ago; Dark Sublime, a cross between the shows made above and so many that could have been. He sees universal themes that still resonate whilst Marianne sees only one job out of dozens.

Oli runs a website on the otherwise neglected show and persuades Marianne to attend a convention for 500 fans in Walsall… nominally in aid of cystic fibrosis but also a chance for people of lack minds to pay tribute. It provides a catalyst for a re-boot of the honesty in Kate and Marianne’s relationship as well as being a turning point for Oli, unlucky in love with his friend Theo but with the realisation that he is not alone in a World full of wonders.

The narratives of the fictional TV show and the here and now collide in a genuinely thrilling and moving closing segment: well written and heartfelt.

Love is all you need.

Andrew Keates directs this top-notch cast so well, there's a genuine warmth and team spirit that both underpins the tribute the futures past but also makes the human drama all the more convincing. As Suzanne says: “I think – love is… rare enough, that it needs… cherishing, wherever it flowers.” So, whether it be about an old TV show or old friends/new friends who love what you love, Dark Sublime is one of the most optimistic and funny plays of the year!

IThankYou Rating: **** Boldly going where no play has gone before, it’s actually very light and definitely sublime!

Tickets available from the Box Office - better be quick!

Big Finish need to release these scripts on audio! Simon Thorp in action!

Keep talking… Dust, Trafalgar Studios

"Suddenly it’s a lump of plastic and metal and not my best friend…”

After the play finished there was life still as the magnificent Milly Thomas stopped her ovation to point out that the play had been produced with the support of the Samaritans, a charity close to her heart and a vital resource for those for whom a conversation can make all the difference.  I was very glad that Milly spoke… relieved she broke the spell of her mesmerising performance and stepped through the forcefield of the fourth wall to connect with us. Really glad she was alright.

We’ve all varying experience of mental illness, there’s not a single family unaffected and we all recognise the symptoms based on our own lives or those we know. For some the thought of self-destruction is unimaginable but others have lived it, brothers, fathers, mothers or sisters absenting themselves because they could see no other way forward.

Milly’s play starts off with her character Alice coolly observing her dead body on the mortuary slab; she carries on almost as if alive, the same speech patterns and sense of humour you’d expect from any twenty-something Londoner.

For Milly the mortuary is just another part of experience and she reacts as anyone would to the look of the female mortician as she “judges” her for wearing a bra to her deathbed and the male for putting his hands where he shouldn’t.

Milly Thomas - all pictures courtesy of Richard Southgate

Her parents arrive, and she views them with well-worn diffidence, as both react exactly as she expects as it she’s just broken any of the dozens of petty rules governing the daily loving drudgery of family life.

But it’s early days and our dead girl will find that everything changes when you can no longer use your mobile or reach out to your friends. Also, once you’re passed away you find out who your friends really are… and your relatives too.

Alice’s afterlife is full of revelations as her parents act up – “this is better than the time Mum reversed up the motorway after missing the turn-off to Chessington World of Adventures…” and brother Rob self-medicates with coke as he “bottles” it all up. Posh Aunty Isobel arrives to take charge and relieve her little sister after Alice’s “selfishness” and relishes the role of “funeral planner”.

All parts are performed by Milly and her transitions are incredible not just across character but also emotion: it’s genuinely startling to see an actor running through walls at this incredible pace, a smile fully formed as tears still role down her face: this is exceptional expression.

“I can’t believe I stayed with you so long because I was frightened of being alone…”

There’s humour too and some wonderfully off-hand and graphic descriptions of her own and other sexual activities. Best friend Ellie – a successful barrister – is seen making love with her new man as she’s also pregnant; life has carried on without Alice even for the one she loved the most. Her ex-boyfriend Ben has moved on and not in an impressive way but, as Milly mimes Alice planning her suicide as Ben enters her from an awkward angle… you know they were never for the long term in any respect.

Alice is disconnected in death as much as she was in life only gradually breaking down when thinking of the last time her father picked her up – a moment she ruined after she dropped and broke her phone. The symptoms of her depression are revealed subtly and with poignance: her father picked her up again as she lay dead… in death she tastes emotion long denied even as physical experience is nulled (she cannot taste a Bakewell tart).

Milly makes us really care for Alice and we’re devastated all over again as she relives the moments of her suicide: it has to be this way, no blinking aloud.

Sara Joyce directs with clear intent and invention and uses three mirrors to enhance her actor's presence and to add to the dislocation. Lighting occassioanlly reveals the audience - all rapt and caught between a rythmn of laughter and concern.

Living or dying it's a very personal choice and Milly Thomas, I salute your bravery and skill in producing such intense revealing work. We left in near silence and the play stays with you as you walk to the tube and travel home; I doubt I’ll ever forget it and nor should I. It leaves your heart heavy just as your spirit is moved by the performer’s dexterity and it makes you want to make sure you do what you can while you can.

Dust plays at the Trafalgar Studios until 13^th October and tickets can be snagged off the website or Box Office.

IThankYou Theatre rating: ***** Deeply affecting, essential autumnal viewing. Please go and see it.

Dust is produced by award-winning production company Deus Ex Machina Productions and

partners with Samaritans to raise awareness of help available to those in need.

The Samaritans can be contacted toll-free on 116 123, email: jo@samaritans.org or via their website.

Only a game? The Red Lion, Trafalgar Studios

It was fitting to see former QPR, Spurs and England player Gerry Francis taking his seat for this examination of the primal appeal of football - he is one of the greats and, indeed, a legend. The Red Lion is split between despair and eternal hope and there are times the language is poetic as Patrick Maber’s fluid prose took us deeper into our collective love of the game and sometimes the actors almost sang the words, just as we sing from the terraces.

You might have figured Mr Marber as an Arsenal fan, part of the well-educated Islington elite favouring the continental sophistication of these elegant under-achievers but for a number of years he forsook the former "Invincibles" to not only support but co-own Lewes AFC, a lower-league outfit whose existence he helped to ensure. As a former board member, he knows full well the tortured soul of the game even in the Isthmian League’s lower reaches.

Football rarely comes across well in performance arts – although for various reasons I never saw Fever Pitch (what Liverpool fan would...) – but Marber hits the target blasting the ball into the top of the net with unstoppable accuracy.

John Bowler and Stephen Tompkinson

He is aided by the quite exceptional performances of the three players, sorry, performers with Stephen Tompkinson, John Bowler and Dean Bone (if you’re good enough, you’re old enough!) who form a powerhouse midfield trio who not only fully express themselves, they simply leave everything on the pitch…

Marber re-cut the play for its performance at Newcastle’s Live Theatre company and re-located it to the North East and the Northern League, the second oldest league in the World. This is one of the hotbeds of football, with deep roots intertwined with the local industries of ship building and coal mining. Here as much as Glasgow and Lancashire the passions run as deep as local culture and industrial rivalries. Bill Shankly may have had his tongue in cheek but we all know the truth in his suggestion that football was not a matter of life and death, it was more important than that. Yet, in the decades after that statement, football has lost its way as TV revenues dwarfed gate receipts and the game became business as sport.

This is reflected even in the lower leagues and Tomkinson’s Jim Kidd is a manager with Mourinho ideals, someone who thinks success is all that counts and that loyalty means just doing what he says. It’s a quite superb performance with the lad turning on an emotional sixpence, likeable to loath-able in equal measure, he has all of the best lines – this is a very funny play – and also reduces you to the verge of tears with a back story of loss and desertion. He can’t really love the club or even the game as he doesn’t really know how to care for himself and he’s not alone.

C'mon you irons! John Bowler

John Bowler plays Johnny Yates also known as “Ledg”, the man who once scored the winning goal in the second round of the FA Cup thereby ensuring the big payday that enabled the club to build its main stand. He later managed the club but his life fell apart when they were relegated and his home life collapsed along with his health. He eventually returned to become the club’s kit man still feted for past glories.

The play attacks at pace and for a while it’s the jokes that turn your head with Jim lambasting the club’s groundsman, who never forks the pitch, and  after Yates points out it’s laid on a former plague pit, the manager responds “I wonder how it drains so well?” Tompkison’s comic timing is absolutely spot on and it’s a joy to watch him run with Marber’s elaborate lines as if he’s just thought of them.

Bowler's Yates is the emotional heart of the play though, representing that era when loyalty was to the club, the fans and the community. He was a wholehearted player who threw is body on the line, passionate enough to make his lack of flair irrelevant and good enough to play a couple of seasons in the old Division Three. Now he has an almost religious faith in football to go with his life-long association with a club his father also played for.

Dean Bone as Jordan - a footballing rose between two thorns

He says he “found” Jordan (Dean Bone) when the youngster arrives at the club looking for a game almost like finding Jesus, the need for a saviour is so strong. Jordan has that supernatural edge rarely seen in non-league: he can play. Yet he also has a past and is hiding something from both manager and mentor… His arrival presents both with a chance to see their dreams realised as he guides the team to the top of the league. For Jim it’s the promise of a title and a better club, not to mention a transfer and a “bonus” whilst for John it’s the chance to see genuine talent thrive for its own sake.

The two men represent outlooks from a more collectively-conscious Britain to one soured by greed and self-delusion. Jordan comes from the chaos forged by the latter… it’s a very Brexit play, not in terms of subject but in mood. Where do we go now?

Max Roberts directs with a high pressing game which maintains narrative shape and impact throughout. He turns the Trafalgar studios into a cauldron of passion which pulls the compact audience in. At the end we let rip with cheers on top of applause – it's a great play for the neutral but we’d all recognised the need to take sides long before the end.

Don’t miss this one, superlative performances, high emotion and the determination that, even with 90 minutes fast approaching, it’s still all to play for: Total Theatre!!

The Red Lion plays until 2nd December and tickets are available from the Trafalgar Studios website. It is so strong I would be very surprised if it doesn't get promotion very soon!

IThankYouRating (has to be) *****

All photos courtesy of Mark Douet.