H G Wells’s The
Time Machine (1895) was the first science fiction novel I read, at the age
of 11. I can date this precisely because
I was in hospital for an operation. Far
from the association with surgery putting me off it, I have always had a soft
spot for the book, with its vivid descriptions of the Time Traveller’s journey
to a far-future world inhabited by the passive Eloi and the predatory
Morlocks. I have also been a fan of Robert Lloyd Parry for some time,
having seen him perform stories by M R James in the intimate surroundings of
the Corpus Christi Playroom in Cambridge.
So it was with great anticipation that I visited Anglia Ruskin
University’s Mumford theatre to see Lloyd Parry’s one-man performance as Wells’s much
put-upon chrononaut.
There were two performances at the Mumford, on 23
and 24 May. Each had an Initial talk,
and that on the second night was by Professor Roger Luckhurst of Birkbeck
College. Luckhurst is currently editing
an edition of The Time Machine for
Oxford World’s Classics to coincide with Wells’s books coming out of copyright
in 2016, and his talk, ‘Forward to the Past! Some contexts for 1890s time
travel’, was presumably a dry run for the introduction. Addressing the audience flatteringly as
‘hard-core Wellsians’, he took us on a tour of the novel’s themes and
historical background. Starting with an
overview of Wells’s life, Luckhurst outlined his immense reputation while
alive, yet its rapid decline after death.
The lively popular early scientific romances gave way to increasingly
turgid didacticism, his distrust of democracy and conviction that a rational
technocratic world government populated by the intellectual elite would create
a better future sounding increasingly naive.
Luckhurst situated The Time Machine within both science fiction and the fin de siècle
Imperial Gothic and saw it as futurology, projecting current trends
forward. It was in dialogue with other
books, such as Edward Bellamy’s Looking
Backward (1887) and the futuro-mediaeval socialism of William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890). Before his journey the Time Traveller thinks
that the future will continue on a smooth progression, whereas when he arrives
in it he sees only decay and an end to evolution. There were concerns in the 1890s over such
issues as the decadence of society and degeneration which the novel tapped into
(Max Nordau in his influential 1892 book, Entartung, published in 1895 as Degeneration, talked about ‘the
unchaining of the beast in man’, and what is the beast if not a Morlock?). Humanity in Wells’s novel has bifurcated into
two species, heirs of present-day social classes for whom social distinctions
have become biologised. The feeble Eloi,
living in the ruins of a vanished civilisation, are a mockery of the Victorian decadents
that Wells despised, the subterranean Morlocks represent a retreat back down
the evolutionary chain. The Time
Traveller is appalled at what we have become while acknowledging our kinship
with these creatures. When he escapes
into the even further future he finds the world exhausted, its death surely not
far off as it succumbs to entropy.
Luckhurst argued that Wells’s best work had been
done by 1901, with much rubbish produced after that date by the prolific
author, to the extent that writers as diverse as Henry James and the literary
modernists defined themselves against him.
However, Luckhurst stressed that there was a great deal of snobbery in
this because of Wells’s lower-middle class background, even though he was
unusual as a novelist during the period in actually having had a science education.
E M Forster’s ‘The Machine Stops’ (1909) was a humanist attack on
Wells’s technocratic ‘utopia’, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) was an even more influential satirical
riposte. Yet The Time Machine is an ambiguous text, balancing optimism and
pessimism; the future inhabited by Eloi and Morlocks can be changed, if we have
the will to do it.
After this entertaining and illuminating
introduction, it was off to see what Lloyd Parry had made of the role of the
Time Traveller. The set comprised the titular
machine, a garden chair and a bird bath, the last filled so that from time to
time he could plunge his face into it for a refreshing draught before
continuing his story. The time machine
itself was a beautiful construction. The
designer had avoided the temptation to go steampunk and have whirring gears and
flashing lights. When seen initially on
its side it looked like small tapered mahogany missile but when upright it was
in the form of a huge metronome, with time increments displayed on the pendulum
which handily could be pressed into service as a weapon later in the action. The machine was a versatile bit of kit because
it doubled up as aspects of the far-future scenery, an effect facilitated by
staples up one side that the Traveller could climb. It could be a hill enabling him to survey his
surroundings, and even masquerade as a well by the process of hinging back the
tip and staring down into it. The script
was complemented by effective sound effects and lighting, insistently chiming
clocks particularly helpful in ratcheting up the tension.
The setting at the start is the garden outside his
house (hence the bird bath and garden chair) and the beginning bore a
similarity to that of the Corpus Christi James performance I witnessed, in that
he was on stage but hidden in the machine before the audience entered. The
Time Machine started with him falling out of it exhausted and writhing
about until he regained his composure.
Whether intentional or not, it was reminiscent of the beginning of Danny
Boyle’s 2011 National Theatre production of Frankenstein,
when the creature (alternately Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch)
emerged from a womb-like structure and fell about helplessly while learning to
control its limbs.
The wildly bearded Traveller – as in the book we
never learn his name – presented a contrast to Lloyd Parry’s clean-shaven
bespectacled M R James. It was curious
too to see the actor so mobile after his seated performances as James. The Traveller was cast in the mould of the
Victorian gentleman explorer, perhaps the John Hanning Speke of time travel,
though Lloyd Parry seemed to be channeling Professor Challenger in his vigorous
physicality. He spent the evening
wearing extremely disreputable-looking long-johns, signifying what a tough time
he has had/will have (oh these time paradoxes) in 802,701. (The publicity leaflet is misleading in
showing the Time Traveller properly attired and sporting a neat moustache.) A thought did occur that if he has only the
one pair, and wears them for every performance, by the end of the run it won’t
be a one-person show because they will be able to participate
independently. A change from the novel
is that one actor cannot easily replicate the circle of friends who listen to
his story, and instead the theatre audience stands in for them. At the same time, the audience plays the part
of a jury weighing evidence; we are explicitly given the option of taking the
story as untruth, and have to assess its plausibility.
As the action continued, Lloyd Parry was able to
generate a real sense of tenderness when talking of Weena, an Eloi who had
become devoted to him, and of menace when recounting his trip into the
underground lair of the Morlocks in search of his purloined time machine. Overall the Traveller did not come across as
a particularly likeable character: he showed that he could be petulant under
stress, and mean to Weena when she became irritating. He was put out by the failure of the Eloi to
be suitably impressed by his achievement in visiting them, and not unreasonably
disappointed to find that intellectual and social development had not made a
smooth progression from the 1890s to some higher plane. Whether or not our descendants have such a
future to look forward to – and who knows what the Traveller would have found
had he ventured out of the Thames Valley – Wells’s novel is a rich text, and Lloyd
Parry’s interpretation was enjoyable and thought-provoking. You do worry though about the foolhardiness
of travelling to unknown places with only a box of matches but without a
firearm or a change of underwear. It all
seemed most unlike the correct behaviour of a Victorian gentleman.
