EDINBURGH 2018 - BWW Review, PASSIONATE MACHINE, Zoo Charteris

We are all time travellers in our own way. After all, a to-do list is essentially a message from a past self.

But what would happen if you started getting messages from a future version of you? That is the intriguing premise of Passionate Machine, a one-woman show written and performed by Dr Rosy Carrick.

Carrick presents herself as the ultimate fangirl, with a love for not just time travel movies, Rocky and David Bowie, but for Russian poet Mayakovsky. Her friends joke that, given a time machine, she would immediately proceed to abduct him from 1930 Moscow.

That sort of quip would not usually go any further, but Rosy receives a letter ostensibly from her future self, stranded in the past with a broken time machine, having attempted to follow through on a most excellent groupie adventure.

We follow Rosy's odyssey through her conviction that the letter is a prank, her resolution to investigate further just in case, and her quest to source an open-minded physicist through Gumtree, as she comes to personal realisations along the way and brings the show together in a moving conclusion.

A tightly plotted script is supported with strong production values, particularly the effective use of multimedia, which adds a touch of verisimilitude to Rosy's stories through email screenshots, highlighted passages from physics texts, and drunken selfies.

Indeed, with the show presented as a true story, this encourages you to go away and research elements of the production to find out just how true to life it is!

Carrick is a figure at once both intellectual - explaining wormhole theory with the aid of a slinky - and highly relatable - recounting blasting the spectacularly motivational theme to Rocky on the way to hand in her PhD thesis. Her engaging performance keeps the audience riveted throughout.

Science fiction has long been a lens through which we can explore our own reality, and Carrick has created a truly fascinating and empowering piece that uses familiar tropes to tell a touching personal story. Don't rely on a time machine - book to see it now!

Passionate Machine is at Zoo Charteris until 27 August

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