A love story, a spaceship, some anarchists and futuristic holograms all come together in Broken Stars, Oxford’s latest new writing which will be performed for the first time in 8th week. Broken Stars is the brainchild of a pair of writers-cum-directors: Zoe McGee and Jordan Saxby. The pair is clearly passionate about their play, but the combination of sci-fi and co-writing breeds a confusing plot despite interesting concepts.
The play draws on ideas from Orwell’s famous 1984 novel, with themes of dystopia and control by an ultimate party: ‘the Simons’(the Broken Stars sci-fi version of policemen). However, although the concepts are meaningful, the play lacks the depths created by Orwell’s novel. Instead the anarchists seem one-dimensional, the Simons are pitied, and the relationship between the couple in space and the current world is bewildering.
The play has two main plots – that of an urban dystopia with anarchists vs Simons, and then a love story set on a spaceship narrated by ‘hologram’ to the anarchists. Sound confusing? The two plots seem rather nonsensical in the preview, despite being showed scenes from throughout the play. It seems that the directors were undecided between two stories with little connection, but wished to include them both anyway. Broken Stars would benefit from a deeper explanation of the interchanging plots.I certainly didn’t understand why the anarchists are watching an illegal ‘hologram’ about a couple in space, but hopefully it will be revealed in the performances in 8th week.
The performances themselves varied among the cast. The opening scene where the anarchists become part of the audience is both dramatic and enticing. However, their lines are often forced, and the script prevents us feeling an overwhelming amount of sympathy for the group. The anarchists’ ignorance is revealed later in the play when Sergeant Carson (Ben Cohen) as the leading ‘Simon’ bursts in on the anarchists with a notably strong performance. His passionate monologue explaining the control of the Simons lends sympathy to the controlling group. The Simons also provide intimidating performances from Huw Fullerton and DJ Gordon wielding baseball bats.
In the spaceship, watched by the anarchists far away in urban dystopia, Alice (Sophie Ablett) as half of the lovestruck couple is certainly a good actress, and acts her character well. However this means that she spends much of her time whining, and teasing, causing her to become slightly tiresome to watch. Alice’s other half; Ben (JY Hoh) is an intelligent chemist who is clearly deeply in love with Alice. The pair have good chemistry, reacting well to each other and as we watch Alice’s illness cause her to deteriorate, it is clear that this will lead to Ben’s demise also.
It is certainly difficult to translate sci-fi writing to stage without the help of special effects provided by cinema. Whilst the preview was definitely the rough cut, with the set design for now only in the minds of McGee and Saxby, the passion that has gone into this play is fantastic, and the premise is interesting. However Broken Stars has fallen into the trap of new writing where the concepts aren’t fully realised in the production. McGee and Saxby create a dystopian world with potential, but unfortunately the play is too confusing in practise without reaching necessary depths to pull-off a sci-fi play.
2.5 STARS
