Flailing and unsure, a bloated exploration of cosmic awkwardness with fleeting and infrequent moments of excellence.
The very first impression is strong, a shining silver paneled wall, an actor already on stage quietly reading a book, and droning spaceship sounds to imply our location. The atmosphere is then immediately shattered by – presumably – a member of the production’s team loudly directing their friends not to sit in the bad seats.
The story gets underway similarly awkwardly with a clash meeting of the characters in the ship’s observation deck, featuring a button that does literally nothing except add more inanity to the already quite heavy handed and clumsy dialogue. Not the best of starts, and it doesn’t improve much either. The badly concealed exposition continues as we watch the pair looking out at the sudden (convenient) asteroid on a collision course with Earth – before it hits, with the lacklustre impact of the lights changing colour, suddenly and unceremoniously. Apocalyptic premise: tick.
A lot of the show consists of tedious separated conversations where we can never tell if the characters are actually speaking to each other or not, or indeed who they even are. I gather (or guess) that was the intention, but it’s done in such an indecisive way that it just ends up being confusing and alienating. The more it happens, the more it starts to grate, unfortunately. I think obfuscated form can be forgivable if it has a resolution later, but here it doesn’t.
The show muddles on, via a few stumbles in the lines and one very conspicuously missing prop. The intermittent ship announcements serve little more than additional exposition or punctuation; the cliche of the dwindling oxygen supply adds to the tension – just about.
This might be the perfect venue for this sort of piece, the audience right there at three sides around the stage. This further evokes the feelings of the two space tourists as they get locked in close quarters together, though that nice pre-show background atmosphere doesn’t ever return. The sparing use of SFX and music means that the emptiness of the space setting just pales into literal emptiness behind the performance, sadly. A lot of the scene transitions are clunky too, with only some vaguely sci-fi-ish swooshing sound to underpin the changes, which are themselves swiftly carried out with little grace or consideration, and then everything snaps jarringly back into silence again.
It’s possibly one of the longest 85-ish* minutes I’ve ever experienced, but there are some flashes of brilliance in there too – erudite musings on the nature of human connection and purpose, and some very touching “what is the actual point of us” type moments too. There are some nice laughs dotted through, but there’s definitely more of a lean towards “tragi” for this tragicomedy. Writer Ege Kucucuk definitely has some strong ideas to muse on, but perhaps stronger connecting material will help them land even more impactfully.
As the literal and metaphorical clock ticks by, some of the lines are strange – including a very forced “me too” quip – and there is also a lot of swearing, gratuitously so at times. That said, credit should be given to the two performers, who do the best they can with such a wildly varying script, and both hold the stage beautifully, making nice use of the architecture of the room too at times.
Riain Cash plays the naive and nervy rich boy Dan with conviction and aplomb, though it does waver a little at times. His character’s journey through the piece is nicely considered and demonstrated though, so his arc plays out comfortably and satisfyingly.
Anna Sylvester is fantastic as Mia, the brash brave-faced driving force of the piece. The heartfelt revelations about her tragic past are a clear highlight of the whole show, the raw emotion is right there on display, excellently pitched by Anna. Mia also has a transformation of her own as the story goes on, which is handled wonderfully too.
Eventually it starts to come to an end, with a surprisingly compelling scene, considering most of what preceded it; a vision of an otherworldly space where the two first find themselves, and then each other. Contrary to the flat and uninspiring lighting of everything prior, this cataclysmic scene uses it masterfully. With an unexpected flooding of smoke to seal this ethereal deal, the hazy lights then slowly ebb away unnoticed at first, dimming imperceptibly until they’re little more than candle strength. It’s a nice synchronisation with the story here, making for a really powerful conclusion to the play.
Except it isn’t. There’s another superfluous burst of clumsy exposition and an entirely pointless final scene that references but doesn’t really justify the Space Karaoke itself, and instead just undermines the stark brilliance of the previous scene. Odd and jarring, but then that is the bar set for this piece and I was rather glad when the lights finally did go out completely.
