The Beast's Pen

Exploring our place in the Universe and the Universe’s place in us, Rachel Blackman’s new play, created with her company, at first seems too burdened with grandiose and pretentious ideas.  Our initial meeting with it’s two characters is also unpromising, as they tell of their lives through photographs that we cannot see, not helping us to get drawn in and empathise with them. Both are forty-somethings; Leila (Blackman herself) is a frumpy, clumsy museum assistant, inherently a scientist; Shahab (Jules Munns) is a displaced Iranian aspiring film maker, lacking direction and inherently an artist. The play’s conceit is that, just as we were all created by cosmic collisions, so these two lives are transformed when they, quite literally, collide and, at the point of collision, the drama too is transformed. We now have an intensely human story of how a friendship, always platonic, inspires two people to develop as individuals and realise their full potential in life. Superb music and lighting underpin the production, but, mostly it is the outstanding performances that ultimately make this extremely moving.