Time Critical at Birmingham Rep Review
Written by Katie for Theatre & Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review
There’s something quietly thrilling about watching a clock tick down onstage. In Time Critical, that ticking becomes the heartbeat of the piece. 68 minutes split precisely in two. On one side of the stage, actor Craig Stephens charts the 34-year history of Stan’s Cafe; on the other, Kianyah Caesar-Downer tackles the same span of global events. Each is given exactly one minute per year, watched over by a chess clock that determines who gets to speak. The concept is simple yet unique, and by the end, surprisingly moving.
I was lucky enough to have seen an earlier version of the show back in 2018, when it toured to my university in Leicester. Then, it was Amy Tailor opposite Craig Stephens. So, when I heard the show had been updated, with seven new years added and a new performer in Kianyah Caesar-Downer, I couldn’t resist seeing how time itself had changed the piece.
From the outset, the contrast between the two sides is comical and ironic. While Caesar-Downer delivers a host of political upheavals, bombings, elections, and world-shifting headlines, Stephens quietly mops the floor, embodying Stan’s Cafe Artistic Director James Yarker in 1997. The humour comes from this tension between scale and subject: while she announces wars and global crises, he responds with life’s smaller, messier milestones: a stolen bike, a new baby, a move to a different flat. It’s funny, but it also feels true. Our personal timelines really do run alongside the chaos of the wider world.
The humour is dry, British, and wonderfully self-aware. Stephens in particular has a gift for understatement. His portrayal of J.K. Rowling through three stages of her career is especially hilarious, and his small, polite “hurrays” in response to Caesar-Downer’s grim headlines land beautifully.
Caesar-Downer, meanwhile, brings an intensity that’s impossible to ignore. Her half of the show is an avalanche of facts and headlines. She’s like a newsreader with too much to fit into the programme. At times it’s overwhelming, but that’s exactly the point. The flood of information mirrors how we experience the modern world: too much, too fast, all at once.
If there’s a small drawback, it’s that Caesar-Downer’s reliance on the cue cards occasionally disrupts the flow. While understandable given the sheer volume of material, moments when she delivers from memory feel noticeably more alive. Her character work, however, is excellent.
Stan’s Cafe’s self-referential excerpts, performed by Stephens, provide some of the most poetic and affecting moments in the piece. They offer a welcome contrast to the relentless factual narration on the other side. Some of these moments might be a bit lost on anyone new to Stan’s Cafe, so a little extra context would help those references land more clearly, but I loved them nonetheless.
Throughout the show, the chess clock looms large, both physically and metaphorically, and reminds us there are real stakes here- will they even get to the end of the show? A live camera feed projects its countdown onto a screen, heightening our awareness of time slipping away. The tension becomes palpable as they race through the years, their pace accelerating into a frantic urgency as we get about 20 mins to the end. Stephens becomes particularly unhinged, whipping out all manner of extravagant costumes, and they are both ‘cutting’ lines left right and centre. It’s chaotic but exhilarating.
Ultimately, Time Critical is more than a theatre show- it’s a reflection on what it means to live in time, to measure our lives against a backdrop of unstoppable events. There’s something oddly comforting about seeing the chaos of the world and the ordinariness of daily life laid side by side, and ‘Time Critical’ reminds us that life, like theatre, is fleeting, but in the right hands, it’s worth every minute.
★★★★★
