My overall impression
TIMEHEART was equal parts Tom Baker-era Doctor Who, exceptional musical theater and Muppets-level hilarity, mixed with a good dose of philosophical discourse on the dangers of time travel. There were enough twists and turns to make M. Night Shyamalan want to leave Hollywood forever. The songs are magnificent, funny, and appropriately big, making you forget that you are inhabiting a small stage and taking you out into the cosmos for intergalactic adventure. The Robot Teamate troupe lives up to their full potential, with all the players getting there due and deftly delivering jokes as well as pathos. The musicians are tight and always on point. Everyone on stage knows what they’re doing and they gel magnificently.
But that’s not all, because the real accomplishment here is in the writing. Having honed their chops on the improv stages of Los Angeles, Robot Teamate has turned their attention to scripted theater and succeeded brilliantly. The structure of the play is amazing, as it gives you appropriate amounts of digestible information while introducing characters and never being too expository. And just when you think you know how everything is about to go down, they throw in surprises to keep the drama alive.
Despite being a galavanting musical adventure across time and space, it turns out that the core of TIMEHEART is about the here and now. SPOILER: How appropriate that the titular Timeheart is not an all-powerful manipulator of the fabric of space-time, but rather the steady rhythmic beat that keeps the universe in balance. Beautiful.
TIMEHEART was the kind of play that reminds me of all the reasons I want to make art. It also makes me feel like I should stop trying, because Robot Teamate has now already said everything I would want to, and I could not have said it better than them.
