This story certainly has its' spooky elements. A guy in black and with no mouth for one thing. A "lunatic" on the prowl who is a mutation for another. The use of the music in the first 2 acts is really effective..it is suggestive and alluring..... "What the hell is going on here?", that is what it is saying. Something deadly. It is dangerous. It is ominous. We know the dog is a gonner when chasing a guy who leaps over walls and practically flies. Something "far away" is going on. Is this guy an alien? Is he a "freak" of nature? The suggestion with the story in the first two acts, musically and thematically is of a sense of danger. A sense of an outsider. We have a couple with health problems (something to fear and dread in itself.) The third act twists this. The meaning is ultimately clarified. There is a suggestion of another possibilty. There is hope! A cure!!!!!! The cure even works, as our adventurous, if not foolhearty protagonist discovers with his white powder. Forget the warnings of the first two acts! This cure works. "I, in my desperation and mistrust of my doctor friend ( humanity, logic and science) know what is best for my wife. I'll give her this unknown medication!" Horahh Horahh! Damn Fool. The story then reveals itself. The outsider to be feared is ourselves, only represented in a future sense. Man is folly. Nature is supreme. Our future rules out. Inevitable?Nature creates a future man that replaces the present! Man's own future and nature replace the present moment ( it is a given that the past, present and future run together in this story ) for an advantage...the advantage of technology. Surely, this modern, advanced fellow is no physical match. He gets rather easily knocked out! But on a mental and technological plane, watch out. He reigns supreme and will have his way. That is the scary element of the story. His folly in his day is an uncontrolled reproduction to the point that "ony the higher forms exist" in his day. His technology is the tool to seek an answer for his humanity
(a prediliction of absolute supremacy). Replace others from another time! That's the solution. The hell with them! With ourselves! The future of man is more folly as well, despite his technology. The drive is overwhelming! If he replaces the present (a past to his future) he devoids his own existance. What price be paid? In both time spans? A wife. A future. His knowledge at the time is sufficient to understand that if he changes the past he changes the present (his future). Like our single minded protagonist, he thinks narrowly and of himself only. Despite our well spoken futuristic friends' verbage, his goal is our destruction. (and his own?). Human nature? Destroy the past, replace the future.The show is scary for it's indirect perception and representation of us. The forces at work are not pretty. Hope it isn't reality. ...9.5.