The Time Step

This far-fetched yet entirely uninspired piece of family-centric drama is baffling in almost every way.

Ageing sweet shop owner Cid and her daughter Ginger are both failed amateur tap dancers. Upon realising that she cannot live vicariously through her talentless daughter, it is revealed that Cid has been dressing Ginger’s son Tony in girls’ clothes, and that the two of them are planning to enter him into a tap dancing competition the next day.

Apart from a cursory mention of "the time step," which Ginger begs Cid to teach her, and an embarrassing and overlong "character" tap interlude from Ginger, there is very little actual dancing or indeed mention of it – perhaps fortunately. As such, it seems odd that Matthew Hurt should have picked this particular art form to set the premise for the most crucial relationship within his play.

This aside, after half an hour of unfocused, tedious and bitchy dialogue between mother and daughter, the action begins, all of which apparently takes place in the rather shoddily realised set of Tony’s pink bedroom. Even the entrance of Bradley, Cid’s old flame, with his endless fishing metaphors and a complete absence of background or character definition cannot enliven the dull and monotonous writing. In a desperate attempt to appear shocking or edgy, the play reveals that Bradley is Tony’s father, and the two women compete for his affection in a repulsive, silly degradation of female emotion. There is nothing to recommend this piece of theatre.