Liverpool Sound and Vision rating 71/2/10
Cast: Darren Pritchard, Helen Turner, Paul Taylor, Zoe Vaux.
Writer: Tom Critch.
Time has a habit of playing tricks on you. What can seem, through the eyes of a 17 year old a bedroom like palace with more space than you know how to fill, 26 years later you wonder when seeing that room again, just how you got every possession you owned in the cramped, confined plot you called a bedroom. What happens though when you allow your eyes access to time and consent it to see things that aren’t there, that somehow accepts time to play a trick on your perception of the scene playing out in front of you? For those who made their way to the Gregson Institute, Tom Critch’s play, Then and Now, did exactly that and for such a young writer, Tom Critch nailed it on the head with such accuracy it positively glowed in the sparks that followed.
As part of Grin Theatre’s look to the future in the young writing talent of Liverpool, Grin Theatre’s Young Playwrights Showcase, performed Tom Critch’s play and the idea of time and what you as a theatre goer may perceive when you sit down and watch a play was well captured, imaginative and with enough of a turn to make you nod and smile broadly with satisfaction at the result.
Two couples sat in a pub, one older full of regret, recriminations and the understanding that time may just have got away from them both, the other, hopeful, sexually knowing but with a conversation hanging over them that niggles away. The audience sees this, takes it in and the germ, the conception of idea takes root that what they see is what they truly see. Tom Critch though takes that idea, rips it in half and chucks in into the murky waters of wayward thought, what comes is the sign of good talent that should be nurtured and cherished.
In an evening of good young theatre, Tom Critch and the cast of Then and Now gave a tremendous example of what was to come in the evening at the Gregson Institute. Grin Theatre certainly know how to nurture the young and Then and Now is a prime example of this encouragement.
Ian D. Hall