The Safe House

It’s always an amazing thing for a theatre lover to find an exceptional new (to me) talent. I encountered Tim Wotherspoon during the 5 pound repertory season last year so needed no persuasion to see him play the lead in his own play. Wotherspoon is one of those actors who exudes theatre through every pore. Not conventionally a leading man, he brings an almost menacing intensity coupled with a subtextual fragility to everything he does…and his comic timing is second to none.

In this three hander he is more than ably supported by Lily Constantine and the seemingly immortal Rhys McConnochie. Both are excellent and engrossing, and figuring out how much their characters actually know is part of the fun. The story is about perceptions…therefore, by definition, about character.

Josie (Constantine) hides inside a safe house, afraid to go outside. Why? Is she a spy caught up in the Cold War? Has she discovered the secret of time travel? Or is she a seriously mentally scarred woman incapable of caring for herself? Do any of these options have to be true? Sid (Wotherspoon) is her brother, or maybe her sister, who may also be a spy and her handler, or perhaps a criminal, or an escapee from an asylum. Alan (McConnochie) is a senior spy, or a brilliant scientist, or a vagrant looking after Josie in exchange for a bed…and the radio is a portal to time travel…or is that the toaster? And while Douglas Adams believes the meaning of life to be 42, Wotherspoon keeps changing the numbers on us. This is delicious Theatre of the Absurd and Wotherspoon, as writer, is the love child of Pinter and Becket, with Ionesco and Genet fighting over who will tutor him. As an actor his performance is astonishing, one minute threatening, the next withdrawing in fear. He espouses nonsense as though it is the complete works of Shakespeare and he alone understands every word.

Produced on a budget of not much more than the cost of two cappucinos, this is spectacular theatre and marvellous comedy. See it. That’s not a suggestion, it’s an order; or maybe it’s subliminal brainwashing. You won’t find the answers…but you’ll see a new set of questions. I’m going again. I still need to discover who is “Ian”?

Coral Drouyn