Theatre / Reviews
Review: Delay, Bristol Old Vic – ‘A sci-fi, bittersweet and sentimental exploration of the heart’
Timothy X Atack, known for his growing litany of award-winning plays such as HEARTWORM or sci-fi thriller FOREST 404, has deployed his new interstellar incursion: Delay.
Reminiscent of the blockbuster film Passengers, and equal in quality (if not better), Delay sees the hundred-day span of one star-crossed lover and the full life of another unfold in a moving and sentimental exploration of the heart, with a sci-fi twist.
Jyuddah Jaymes, playing the one visible character Lin, arrives on the sci-fi spacecraft deck of the Oshun, accompanied by the off-stage voice of Hollyoaks star Vera Chok as AUTO, the ships emotionally vacuous, algorithmically sarcastic AI interface.
is needed now More than ever
Joining Chok as another off-stage voice is Lin’s earthbound beau, Silas – heard only through recorded transmissions – voiced by The End of the F***ing World star, Alex Lawther, everyone’s favourite teen psychopath.
Jyuddah Jaymes graduated from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School with a BA in Professional Acting in 2018. In January, the school announced it would only be providing postgraduate courses for the foreseeable future
The star-crossed trio chart an interstellar story suspended between wit, tragedy and a subtly harrowing inevitability.
But it’s the dissonance in their delivery: one robotic, deadpan and sometimes sarcastic AI, one aching lover and one caught between – that gives Delay its gravity.
Heard but not seen, Lawther makes decades of longing sound believably bittersweet and psychologically abrasive as he lives out his life in just a fraction of Jaymes’ lightspeed Lin – who receives and responds to messages spanning Silas’ lifetime over a matter of days.
Jaymes’ Lin stirs in response with equal ferocity, as he portrays the bereft, humanity-saving astronaut, who only said goodbye to his lover a few hundred days prior, for what has been years in Earth time.
Jaymes portrays a bereft, humanity-saving astronaut with ferocity
Meanwhile, AUTO’s hilarious reprogramming to only reply to “fuck you” with “fuck you too”, after Lin is annoyed at its deadpan and robotic response, cuts the tension and the sentimentality with a gloriously glitched wit.
AUTO’s delivery and accidental wit land well, particularly in contrast to emotionally poignant voice messages from Silas, whose aging accelerates with each reply.
An elegant orange LED-accented stage in an abstract, futuristic and polygonal shape, although simple, lifts the performance into something cosmic and other-worldly.
Paired with the realistic ambience score and striking lighting, the result is a visual nebula that supports the sentimental and emotional gravity to the play.
Bittersweet motifs and comic writing are enough to make Delay a good play.
Delay, however, is not a good play – it’s a great one.
The elegant orange LED-accented stage lifts the performance into something cosmic and other-worldly
The excellence of the play owes itself to the trio, particularly Jaymes, who winningly rises to the challenge of a one-man show with ringside intimacy, as though the audience themselves are aboard the spacecraft.
The important yet funny and relieving nature of AUTO highlights not just the great dynamic created by Chok and Jaymes, but is also testament to the nuance of Atack’s writing and narrative precision.
With a honed ability to weave the narrative threads between the emotional and comic facets of the play that coalesce later on, Atack’s understanding of what constitutes an exciting plot is evident.
Between Silas and Lin is a battle of sentimentality, humanity and duty. Music vs math. Mission vs love.
Delay joins an expanding catalogue of work by Timothy X Atack that explores sentimentality and love.
Determined to defy theatrical tropes such as ‘drama is conflict’, or the tired assumption that audiences only care for an artist’s pain, Atack wagers that sentimentality might be more compelling: Delay proves him right.
Delay is at the Bristol Old Vic until July 5. Tickets are available from bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/delay
All photos: Paul Blakemore
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