Timothy by Michael Milne and David K. Barnes - Blackwatch Road Studios

Timothy by Michael Milne and David K. Barnes - Blackwatch Road Studios

Timothy is billed as a who-dunit in reverse. In fact it's more of a who will do it to who (whom?) first and who (whom?) is really wanting to do anything to anyone in the first place(s?). Annette (Olivia Holland-Rose ) you see is living in fear that her husband, Timothy from the plays title (Tom Shah), will kill her. In the hope of finding a solution she invites down to her cellar (don't ask) the almost sensible Yvonne (Alexandra Wetherell) and the scattly loveable Susan (Sarah McGuiness) to find a solution to this worrying dilemma. If indeed the dilemma exists anywhere other than in her head.

It's a play about confusion. A comedy of errors where errors turn out to be truths that later turn out to be something else. Still with me? It's that sort of play. Take your ear of the dialogue for a moment too long and you'll be left seriously out of touch.

Fortunately the dialogue is competent and engaging, and for the most part realised by actors who commit to their character with a gusto that leaves the audience largely untouched by the scripts somewhat pedantic enthusiasm for repeating itself.

Some of the cast are obviously more gusto'd than others, but that is in part down to the character they are playing and the rather wooly, and often unfocused direction.

To tell you more would spoil then ending, sufficed to say it's a play that made me laugh at ten in the mooring and nearly made me jump out of my skin. In addition it plays at the bedlam theatre, which is one of the more spacious stages I've seen so far.

Four stars for this play, bumped up from three and half stars by Sarah McGuiness's performance of Susan, an adorably dizzy blonde who steals the show almost from her opening line. Sarah is also staring at the Bedlam in Hit Comet.