Time Critical explores the rapid passage of time, illustrating how so much and so little can change across 34 years. Kianyah Caesar-Downer and Craig Stephens battle with a chess clock, each having 34 minutes to rapidly relay key events from 1991-2025 – a minute per year. Caesar-Downer explores all the political and pop culture moments of the past, whilst Stephens recounts the history of Brummie production company Stan’s Cafe. The pressure on the actors to encapsulate global and personal events in such a short time frame makes for incredibly entertaining and fast-paced theatre.

Created in celebration of Stan’s Cafe’s 25^th anniversary, the piece expertly meshes critical moments in history with the intimate moments of the company’s founders’ lives. The intersection of the events highlights the impact of global crises on everyday life and despite the harsh reality, ordinary life continues.

Time Critical pushes its audience to reflect upon their personal lives, through highlighting common experiences such as birth, death and loss. These are contrasted by international events that everyone has endured – bombs, wars and elections, illustrating that despite their difference in global scale, they shake one’s world on equal levels.

Balancing deep and serious political observations with light-hearted moments, the production is snappy, hilarious and captivating. After investigating such heavy topics in quick succession, humour was often needed to relieve the audience, and the jokes were incredibly funny and expertly timed throughout.

Conceptually, Time Critical is perfect. Combining the interesting subject of personal and political history, with a riveting dynamic – the actors being on an actual time crunch to relay 34 years of history – the show is immensely gripping. However, the fast pace of the production meant that the audience often had to rely on captions to fully understand everything the actors were saying. Whilst the pace was mainly exciting – interesting and varied throughout, keeping the viewer entertained for the full length of the show – sometimes the details were difficult to understand, particularly as the production reached its climax.

Audience members who are already aware of Stan’s Cafe’s legacy are likely to have a deeper connection to the personal history of the show, although researching Stan’s Cafe would also allow people to connect with the story further. However, without this additional knowledge, the briefness of the plot makes it difficult to connect to the storyline and characters. Despite this, the play’s exploration of common experiences, like watching your child grow up or losing a loved one, keeps the show mostly relevant.

As time flies in quick succession, the hands of the clock reach twelve and the audience are reminded that despite this progression, very little has changed since 1991.

Rating: 3/5

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