All Matt Lawrenson had to do was appear on stage to illicit a laugh from this friendly audience. Lulled into a false sense of security he concentrated on playing the lighter side of the piece, rather than exploring its darker undertones. Which was a pity, since it made him appear self-satisfied as a result.
A lighthouse keeper, bored with the mundaneness of his everyday chores, is easily sidetracked, caught up in various fantasies which fill his time and blur the lines of reality. Is he a representation of the sea, or actually the sea itself? Is there a disaster which needs averting or is it a product of his imagination? Is he indeed a lighthouse keeper at all, or is it all a fiction? Though an imaginative, relaxed and well executed piece, I was left wondering why...
Touched/Untouched, however, had much greater depth; creating an atmosphere of loss and foreboding with an eerie soundtrack, oversized objects and speechless puppets, as a woman explores a part of her emotional self lost, the suggestion seems, through an unspoken tragedy, in a world inhabited by Roald Dahl like creatures. On stilts, Pip Jones uses physical distortion to convey the characters' sense of emotional detachment but, frustratingly, badly positioned props masked a lot of what she did, cutting her contact with the audience. Indeed the most touching moments were those when she lost herself amongst us, risking all. Tightened this would be a very strong piece.