Backwards and Forwards

Writer: David Halpin. Performer: Jed Murray. Run time: 11.48 mins.

 

“I need to tell you something, and you need to take me serious”

Well. We are living in strange times. Central Dublin is empty, everyone is inside watching TV even though there is no rugby on, it’s near impossible to get a pint, and oh, yeah, the wardrobe behind the chair, it’s actually a time machine.

It takes a few minutes for this fact to be established. Our narrator is talking to someone on face time and he is clearly nervous. Not just because of the time machine, but because he fears that he will not be listened to. After several weeks in lockdown he is a bit rusty but his mannerism and demeanour give the impression that he is often not listened to. This adds to his endearing, likeable nature. Over the course of the conversation, of which we can only hear his side, we find out that the time machine can only make one journey. So he has a choice, forwards or back. The choice is more than that though. He would like to use this discovery to help mankind. Maybe to find a vaccine. Or to go back and warn people about what is coming. Will his friend know what to do, if he even believes him, and what world changing (and Sunday World front page) decision will he make?

Our narrator, despite his fidgety behaviour, acts as though turning one’s wardrobe into a time machine is completely normal; albeit a little different to the lockdown hobbies others have been taking up. In the circumstances maybe it is. The world seems to have turned upside down and he has found a vehicle that allows him to face the fear and horror of what is happening. His desire to help may also be a desire to do something. To not just sit at home and wait the situation out. Here Halpin’s script gets to grips with the anxiety, fear and frustration of the moment.

We do not hear the person he is talking to, only the responses, so we have to fill in the gaps from his reactions. This technique works particularly well and adds to the humour of Backwards and Forwards. This is reinforced by the narrators strong Dublin accent (“I don’t bleedin’ know”) and his colloquial responses when he is questioned, and when he becomes exasperated with his companion’s slow acceptance in his invention. Halpin’s script and Murray’s acting capture the strange times we are living in while wrapping it up in a dose of absurdism and comedy.