Writer: Katy Matthews
Director: Cerys Evans
An interesting, adventurous sci fi play about the complexity of time, butterfly effects and insurance which ultimately bites off more than it can chew.
Stockbrokers frantically answer ringing telephones- only they aren’t investing in stocks as we know them but in specific dates and times. After a brief but raucous scene, the main story begins and we follow Pryor as he disputes his refused insurance claim: that his child has been replaced with another due to a time alteration. Pryor (Andrew Crouch) debates with the insurance agent, Charlie (Matt Vickey), and his supervisor, Post (Eleanor Stourton) over the details of his insurance cover, his photographic memory and a distant echo of a lullaby that can only mean there has been a shift in the timeline. Welcome to a new reality where cryptic messages from the future can be sent to the past as a warning of incoming dangerous or tragic events. These messages can then be interpreted and an alteration can be made to stop those disasters from happening. A new timeline is made where the tragedy didn’t happen, but echoes of the old reality can leak through in the form of smells or sounds, and Pryor can remember his child from that other timeline.
Music For Cats explores the complexity of time and, ultimately, society’s greed and impulse to monetise literally anything. The play is a satirical comedy littered with witty humour which the cast (of only three) do a wonderful job with. Each actor plays two characters- a stock broker and someone in the insurance debacle- and they each do well to distinguish the characters apart from the other through accents and tones of voice.
Pryor’s dilemma is thought-provoking and raises many questions about the morality of changing an outcome that was already destined to happen. Is it really right to stop someone from being born in order to save hundreds of lives? Should an innocent bystander’s path be changed without their consent to stop something we can’t even be sure is going to happen? Although interesting and gripping, this juicy hypothetical at the heart of the play can sometimes feel skipped over or diminished. A large part of the play is spent explaining how timelines work, how the insurance company prevents catastrophes and time dilations. Multiple analogies are used to explain this: it’s like a tree with a new branch or like a record with a new groove. It feels like a lot of exposition without much substance. Amongst the analogies and timeline explanation the script springs off into other philosophical thoughts about Utilitarianism, how penguins lack empathy and how cats like music of a higher frequency. At times these divergences can feel like a hollow excuse for the writer to boast their intelligence and, although very interesting, distract from the main meat of the story.
The play does a good job of combining the complex sci fi story with punchy humour and satirical commentary on our capitalist society but the hypotheticals are left unanswered. A lot more fun could have been had in exploring the ‘what if’ questions which we are all left wondering.
Reviewed on 14th May
