Time Critical

Sharon Boadu Reviews at The Rep Birmingham

You will learn more about the history of the world between 1991 and 2025 in Stan’s Café theatre production, Time Critical, then you probably did in your high school history class. 

Kianyah Caesar -Downer and Craig Stephens attempt to compress 34 years of global history and personal history into 34 minutes respectively, each year allocated 1 minute of expression. It is a wonder the number of amazing performances, words, lessons, humour and laughter that can be shared in such a short period of time, even though in reality the span of time is decades away. 

It was interesting to see that the production started with the year 1991 and not the years prior to that but I guess it would be because Stan’s Café, whose history was also interwoven within the performance was founded in 1991. 

Speaking of interwoven histories, the production was the perfect blend of major and serious global historical moments and seasons, from wars to the signing of treaties and agreements to inventions to public figures being born and dying to major disease outbreaks, and the history of Stan’s Café and the actors’ personal lives.

All this is made more interesting in the presence of a chess clock which is pressed to signify the start or end of a minute which is year on either side of the two actors. As I sat there watching, I couldn’t help but wonder how interesting life would be if it all happened that fast – within a minute – and then I reminded myself that in hindsight, life is indeed happening that fast. 

Another interesting element to this production was the disparity between what was happening globally, especially on the political scenes and what was happening in the actor’s personal lives. It projects a riveting concept of how we live our lives in relation to the world around us, showcasing the different levels of the spiralling nature of our different life experiences. Somehow if feels like a lot of pressure on mere mortals to endure and thrive within the context of so many negatives and positives happening on different levels at the same time. The production indeed shifts your perspective, and you might leave the theatre feeling more gratitude and grace towards yourself and the resilience we carry within our world.

The actors did a great job incorporating lots of humour and laughter as the mundane is mixed with the serious life events and a lot of ‘aha’ moments as I learned about things that happened even before I was born. It is definitely a must watch for anyone interested in the relationship between arts and life or wants an out of body experience on how humans are living out their personal drama against the backdrop of global events and issues.