Mind The Gap - Library Theatre - 16/01/08 by Julia Taylor

Mind The Gap, presented by Loci as part of Re:Play, the Library’s Theatre’s presentation of plays shown locally in unconventional venues, was nominated for Best New Play in the Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards. It was good though I don’t think I’d have given it an Oscar.

A couple are literally thrown together when the tube train they are travelling in comes to a violent halt in a tunnel.

In darkness, they comfort one another as they experience the realisation that rescue might not come in time. It turns out that Dawn (Louise Morris) and Dismas, (Luke Walker who wrote the script) have met before. Dawn is a party animal and Dismas a wimpy stammerer who uses an in inhaler - yet, remarkably, there had been a chance that, at the party from which they are returning, they might have got together.

Both Louise and Luke are good at conveying the terror of their situation and the support they give one another by dancing in the dark, or just talking is put over well.

There’s a funny moment when Dawn feels the need to relieve herself on the floor and Dismas inadvertently takes a picture.

But the accolade should go to Emma Cook for her lighting and sound design both of which had an impact on the success of the production. The lights flicker and when they go out, Emma still allows you to see the couple.

Her sound effects are even better. There is the noise of the tube station, the grinding as the tube comes to a halt, and the dripping and eventually sloshing sound of water that is to become their damnation. The echo of the words “It’s stopped” at the end ironically sum up the purpose of the play.