His Name is Tim

Tim Cooper is a hopelessly romantic, guitar-strumming, 14-year-old schoolboy. He’s also a 24-year-old office worker with a dead end job, no motivation and an undimmed ability to fall in love with every woman he meets.

If your teenage self could converse with the jaded twenty-something you, what would they say? And would you take this younger you’s advice? Told through song and drama, Thomas J Millington’s absorbing, energetic Fringe debut is a show about growing up and taking charge – though not necessarily in that order.

Initially Millington, who excels in both roles, keeps the two Tims apart. The play opens with young Tim rushing out the door, legs and arms flailing in true awkward teenager fashion. He’s not just late for school; he’s late for a music lesson with Miss Price, the woman of his dreams (literally). “Her hair is so golden, it’s like the sun. And her eyes are blue like the deepest lagoon,” he swoons.

Older Tim still has the school tie—“it’s retro”—but six years in open-plan drudgery has eroded his youthful bonhomie. A chance encounter with an office temp girl leads him to re-evaluate his life, with a little help from the starry-eyed boy he used to be.

The show works best when the twin lives are presented in parallel: their brief face-to-face encounter is overly didactic and let down by clunky, uncharacteristically humourless dialogue. But this minor gripe aside, His Name is Tim is an entertaining and thought-provoking account of a day in the life-and the lifetime.