FringeReview Scotland 2026
NOW NOT NOW
Rosana Cade, Ivor MacAskill, Tim Spooner, Yas Clark
Genre: Absurd Theatre, Physical Theatre
Venue: Tramway Theatre, Glasgow
Festival: FringeReview Scotland
Low Down
Two performers are making their morning routine in front of us and above us – live and projected. The projections is the same routine, sometimes in sync, sometimes out of sync. Sped up, frantic, ponderous, in slow motion whilst often repetitive and certainly contemplative, their morning routine serves as the subject matter of a physical piece of theatre that kind of begins, now.,
Review
Cade and Macaskill have us tentatively hooked with a voiceover informing us of what is happening as if what is in front of our very eyes is not enough for us to catch on. It works because they tell the tale, comment upon it and engage in slow dialogue between themselves with the words projected on two screens so that nothing is left to chance. It is, at time mesmeric, at others over ponderous.
This is, nevertheless, fascinating. Having taken four years of development work to get here, thanks to funding from Unlimited and commissions from both the Tramway and the Southbank Centre, I suppose I would be loathe to cut any of it out. This a 90-minute straight-through performance that speeds up, goes slowly and is performed in normal time. The speed seems arbitrary but does keep us watching as it unfolds the layers of a relationship and their routines of togetherness.
NOW NOT NOW provides many questions and very few answers, just as it should. Who are they? What are hey disappearing out to do? Why is one of them knitting in the kitchen area? As we reflect upon getting out of a pandemic, where time and how we spend it became more focusses, even precious, this amuses as a counterpoint to a life that seems as high energy, demanding and just as stressful as it was before the word lockdown was whispered. The words doing things differently were then shouted, but society seems to have the equivalent of teenage selective deafness and also teenage angst about contemplating things in an alternative manner – this made me think a lot about the time we have wasted.
There’s something technically impressive about the performance. These are highly skilled performers who hold onto time in a way by not moving or moving very slowly that holds your attention. Their interactions also have great skill, in drawing out a relationship and how each member of that relationship relates to each other.
It says much more than the sum of its own parts.
The voiceovers were at times, meta commenting upon this as a performance. The performers on stage were delivering the voiceovers whilst physically moving at a different speed. Admirable work.
It was hilariously welcomed by the audience in a very full Tramway, however I did feel that at just over 90 minutes, I was being stretched not by the concept but by the repetition. I was close to “enough already”, whilst my audience buddies seemed to want a wee bit more.
The set is like a kitchen but not like a kitchen. Everything has a dual purpose – furniture that is warped, melting cups, kettles that do boil but also seem to steam and so on.
At its core NOW NOT NOW is pure theatre. It takes an absurd notion and starts to suggest some sense in it, and asks us an audience to try and make that sense, through responding to the questions it asks, without ever explicitly asking anything.
It has a very good sense of itself but would benefit from being a little shorter as the repetition began to feel like it was losing us – then again maybe by being lost we find an answer…
