Fringe Online 2026

The Fastest Clock in the Universe

Brittany Rex

Genre: Contemporary, Drama, Theatre

Venue: New Wimbledon Theatre

Festival: Fringe Online, FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

Entertaining Mr Glass? Philip Ridley’s known for his Orton-on-speed menace was still carving out a language and domain for himself, after his debut The Pitchfork Disney. His 1992  The Fastest Clock in the Universe, New Wimbledon Theatre’s studio directed by Brittany Rex, is now on YouTube.  It still sizzles over its 94 minutes plus interval, with switchback danger and this is a first-rate production.

Ridley was happily infuriating critics at the time, shocking them with his pioneering in-yer-face dramas before the term was invented in the mid-1990s with Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill.

Frederick Russell’s Cougar Glass has it over Brian Aris’ Captain Tock (a antique dealer, he pays the rent and his soul too). Especially at its Cougar’s home and he waxes hysterical, rolling on the floor every time anyone gets close to his truth. He’s 30, eternally celebrating his 19^th birthday, obsessed with not ageing, just as those around him are near 50 and 90 respectively.

Karen Holley’s Cheetah Bee is the only one who can stop him rolling on the ground and howling. Bluntly comparing his youth to her extreme age, quite graphically, she calms him with comparisons. An underused character (Ridley would learn economy), Holley’s downright recollections ground the action till the advent of a birthday guest. 15-year-old Foxtrot Darling  (an eager, ingenuous, deliciously jejune take from Kim Whatmore) who’s taken Cougar as role-model. Especially as his brother, five years older, has died.

It’s on the face of it unsurprising Cougar wants to lure a 15-year-old schoolboy, still in uniform. But it’s not just because Cougar wants to see his teen self reflected. He has designs deeper than sexual. Not far removed from drinking virgin’s blood. Trouble is, as Foxtrot arrives early, meeting Tock and Cheetah first, he reveals more than his new-bro role-modelling. He’s even sporting the same cow-lick forelock n the middle of his forehead. There’s a rhyme to that. Sherbet and Foxtrot seem oblivious to the homoerotic currents.

His brother’s former girlfriend Sherbet Gravel (Naomi Preston-Low) has designs too. She’s taken Foxtrot as her new lover. Fleeing from gang violence she’s streetwise. Indeed she’s meant to be waiting downstairs on the street but understandably has got “fucked off with waiting.” Cougar’s seething, but Captain Tock welcomes them in. The lights go out. It’s here the modulated lighting design by James Denny comes into its own. And at the climax, spectacularly.  Rex’s parlour set is neatly realistic: it sets off the gothic tale.

Sat at a birthday party table with trimmings, the second act’s dynamics skew with more pace and switchback, and pure obliviousness. To Cougar’s silence Sherbet – Preston-Low arcs blissfully blowtorch arias – takes over, supported by the Captain. Fleeing her past, she wants a traditional marriage and util then there’s “no hanky-panky”. And she’s pregnant with her former lover’s child. She and Foxtrot are under illusion Cougar’s 19, and only one year to go before he becomes “an old man”. And it’s never her fault Foxtrot’s brother died. Sherbet’s life-affirming if slightly overbearing character has Cougar on the defensive. Russell is dangerously silent till Sherbet and Foxtrot kiss.

It’s then that Aris’s monologue about balding young from 18 and his own painful aspirations radiates a kind of damaged vision. Sherbet’s aspirations to “grow old gracefully” are painfully, if unknowingly pushing every one of Cougar’s buttons. Particularly when the red noses come out. Having commanded everyone make a wish, Sherbet unleashes revelations. Including Captain’s sister and some confessions.

With fight and intimacy direction by Nora Iso-Kungas, this is a tightly-wrought work where the clockwork ratchets up like a Greek tragedy with laughs. Till it isn’t, as the Captain and Sherbet, entranced in his Blind Girl and Prince tale, notice another scene.

This production has Ridley’s imprimatur. Rex and her team worked directly with him in the rehearsal room for four weeks. They’d established a working relationship following on from Ghost from a Perfect Place  (the third in an informal trilogy featuring Pitchfork Disney and Clockwork in that order) in 2025.

Strangely underrated, Ridley still remains for many one of the finest contemporary British playwrights. 34 years on, The Fastest Clock in the Universe remains startlingly relevant. Written in 1992, it easily could have felt stuck in its In-Yer-Face decade, like many plays that followed it.

It’s the strange obsessive clock in Ridley’s imaginarium that ensures  The Fastest Clock in the Universe hits so hard. Perhaps harder now than in 1992. Cougar’s prescient obsessiveness preludes the lives we live online and the control the digitised and filtered world exerts on us. Cougar is an avatar, a mirror, a prophesy.

Phenomenal acting from the cast. Aris’ lyrical regret and subdued passion, Holley’s matter-of-fact power; particularly in a final monologue. Whatmore as the boy out of his depth but fathoming adulthood in a welter of fire and blood is compelling in Foxtrots confusion; as the one played upon by the two strongest characters.

Russell’s scorching chill, an Ortonesque character without the humour is memorably unpleasant in his fused narcissism. For some there might seem stereotypical ripples here, though it’s set in a recognizable Ortonesque landscape, with a more gothic, less comic slant. Preston-Low’s slowly exploding performance mesmerises as it strips back Sherbet’s skin, much like the metaphor used by Holley’s Cheetah Bee in her final words.

Ridley’s early work is a revelation. It both prophesies his alter direction but also strands obsessions he’d work through but have relevance now. The obsession with animal cruelty marking Pitchfork Disney is still present, and the trilogy bears its own contemporary weight. It hasn’t dated.  It’s as worthy of our attention as recent Ridley, and rivets us forever. A must-see.

This production’s currently available to watch on the YouTube link below, but is currently developing another run.

Photo Credit: Amy Wicks Young

Published June 5, 2026June 5, 2026 by Simon Jenner