Theatre review: Submarine Time Machine
Submarine Time Machine ****
Speirs Wharf, Glasgow
The whole show, performed by a team of professional actors with members of the local community, is written in strong rhyming couplets by the show’s writer-director, Simon Sharkey. Some segments are just too long and wordy, leading to a two-hour experience that would be stronger and more vivid at 90 minutes or so. At their best, though, the scenes are unforgettable: the story of the wee boy who “pulled the plug” in the canal superbly re-created by local schoolchildren, Michelle Gallagher’s pregnant wartime air-raid warden, Alan McHugh as Captain Smith of the submarine, leading us through time.
And the point of the show, of course, is that this is the vital moment when the NTS shows its new community that its “theatre without walls” mantra is more than a slogan; that its mission is to tell Scotland’s stories, and that that includes the stories of the battered and fast-changing part of Glasgow where it will now build its future.