Theatre review: Twice Upon a Time

Published on Friday 10 July 2009 19:00

TWICE UPON A TIME **** DUNDEE REP

THE emergence of Dundee as a world centre for the development of computer games has been one of the great Scottish success stories of recent times. But exploring what the world of computer games means – how it messes with our minds, and changes our sense of reality – is a much more complex business. Dundee Rep's new youth theatre show Twice Upon a Time was scripted by Neil Duffield, one of Britain's leading writers of youth theatre, and jointly devised and created by a company of more than 40 youngsters, who have also worked alongside the professional crew as young directors, stage managers, designers, and marketeers; and the obsessions of a generation raised on virtual reality are everywhere in the show.

Introduced before every scene by spectacular computer-generated imagery, Twice Upon A Time begins in a typically kitsch fantasy-fiction future, where a border guard, Callum, meets and falls in love with a refugee girl, Yelena. Through the glittering magic of an old rediscovered computer disk, he's lured away by a goddess of love into another world that seems closer to our own, "before the great warming". After the interval the show begins to work up an intensely interesting head of steam, as the action repeats itself in a subtly different form, with the same characters played by different actors. There's some serious thought here about storytelling, perception, imagination, and different realities; and a few fine performances, too, from a company whose outstanding commitment and energy shine through every line of this blazingly adventurous show.