"'Time Bomb' devised by Little Gift Theatre company is a harrowing piece, and it was immediately clear from a delicately choreographed opening scene that each of the two performers had undergone radical surgery.
"The starkness of such a revelation was disturbing and the issues springing from it were given many treatments, some poignant, some appalling and some hilarious. Reflections on mortality were juxtaposed with grimly remembered 'consolations': "It's not as if you're young, is it? You don't really need them."
"In one bittersweet scene in an anonymous waiting room, a dialogue took place in which everything from family life to the latest sessions in chemo/radio therapy was 'absolutely fine'. Only the changing cadences of this absurd mantra revealed the fear which lay behind it.
"The piece was extremely sure-footed. It never once toppled into self-pity or rage, and some of the musical interludes were not only delightful pieces of comic releif, but also powerfully ironic. For what was revealed in this extra-ordinary show was that despite fear and anger, dignity and beauty could still transcend it. Photographs projected on to the set - some uncompromisingly stark, some unbearably poignant - served as two functions. They acted as a powerful commentary and they also blurred the edges between the shaped drama we were watching.
"By the end of the piece we, the audience, had been offered two distinct challenges; first to confront our own fears through the courage of two remarkable women and second, to reflect upon the power of their drama to dismantle some of those taboos which still charactise attitudes to cancer."
