“Let’s do the Time Warp,” they sing in The Rocky Horror Show. That might be the motto for this dazzlingly ingenious 1994 play by Alan Ayckbourn which has echoes of Back to the Future, Psycho and the time-plays of JB Priestley. But what is impressive is how Ayckbourn uses a fiendishly clever plot to impart the cheering message that foreknowledge enables us to alter our destiny.
The action starts in 2020 with Poopay, a nervy dominatrix, witnessing a confession by a corrupt magnate about the lethal disposal of his two wives. Escaping from a murderous henchman through the communicating door of a posh hotel suite, Poopay slips back in time to 2000 where she meets the tycoon’s second wife, Ruella, whom she attempts to forewarn. By the same device Ruella goes back a further 20 years to offer similar counsel to her disbelieving predecessor, Jessica.
If this sounds complicated, that’s because it is. But Ayckbourn never allows the time-travelling plot-twists to obscure the point that good can triumph over evil and that women, far more than men, have the capacity to be agents of change.
This comes through strongly in Lindsay Posner’s production where the three women are sharply defined and wittily played. Rachel Tucker’s self-styled sexual consultant goes through a total transformation while Imogen Stubbs’s Ruella is a model of middle-class grit and Lucy Briggs-Owen’s Jessica is a genteel toff on whom the light slowly dawns.
They are keenly supported by Robert Portal, David Bamber and Matthew Cottle in a play that doesn’t pass the time but actually enhances it.
• At Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until 27 June. Buy tickets at theguardianboxoffice.com or call 0330 333 6906
