Review: An Attempt to Lose Time
Miranda Prag’s one-woman show is a wonderfully weird exploration of time, climate change, hubris and how humanity can do things differently. (Image: Alana Pahor)
By Alana Pahor | @Alana_Pahor
Is it possible to live without time? As the audience seats themselves around the candlelit tables of the intimate theatre space, they look to the stage for an answer.
Their gaze falls on a copper pipe structure adorned with bike wheels, silver tins and a brass gong.
Next to it is a green cloak draped over a mysterious object on the floor, which, to the audience’s surprise, begins to rustle and grow upwards before their eyes.
Ripping off the cloak, Miranda reveals herself to the crowd, staring them down intensely for an extended period of silence before launching into a witty monologue about morning routines and deadlines.
At this moment, the essence of An Attempt to Lose Time is revealed; it’s a fast-paced balancing act of humour and bizarreness, of nonsense and insight.
Miranda, who plays herself, has a simultaneously awkward and commanding stage presence that captivates the audience.
As she rambles breathlessly about snoozing her alarm and productivity guilt, she jolts between yoga poses, hopping to various points on stage.
A moment later, she eyes the audience with suspicion, as if she’d forgotten they were there, before diving into another monologue.
Her rapid variations in stance, tone and eye contact keep the audience on the edge of their seats throughout the show—every minute there is another jarring change in her countenance.
The dynamic nature of the show is furthered by her addition of a mystical alter ego.
As Miranda journeys through British canals in an “attempt to lose time,” she’s repeatedly interrupted by other-worldly red lighting and tribal music.
During these scenes, Miranda dons her green cloak and transforms into an all-knowing cosmic witch.
At times, this alter ego’s jokes stretch quirkiness a little too far, with her theory that crabs will take over the world coming across as a forced attempt at randomness.
That being said, the witch’s humour was well balanced with an air of comical cynicism; she rants at the audience about how humans have equated time with profit and are destroying the earth as a result.
The intensity and fast-paced rambling is unsettling and exposing; the audience feels they’re being called out for their failings as a species.
Another layer of visual interest partially relieves this unsettling feeling and prevents the show from becoming too gloomy of an experience.
Throughout An Attempt to Lose Time, Miranda pulls apart the pipe sculpture onstage and transforms it into something new by hanging planetary mobiles and carefully balancing bike wheels.
Her work is not only intriguing for its striking appearance, but for what it represents.
In picking apart standard time and recreating it on her own terms, Miranda shows that time isn’t the problem, but how we define it.
Through her dynamic splicing of sculpture art, alter egos, comedy, and intense stares, Miranda crafts an uncanny experience that leaves the audience questioning what time means to them.
She invites us to slow down, reject the capitalistic standard time that has been instilled in us, and live life by our own clocks—however weird those clocks may be.
An Attempt to Lose Time is showing at The Warehouse Theatre until February 25.