Under the direction of Thomas Bailey and Emma D’Arcy, The cosmonaut’s last message to the woman he once loved in the former Soviet Union becomes a much simpler expression of human emotion than the title might suggest. David Greig’s script doesn’t follow a strict linear narrative but is instead tied together by a story of two Soviet astronauts that are stranded for many years in outer space, ignorant of the collapse of the superpower that put them there. Their scenes are intertwined with those of the people remaining on earth whose lives, seemingly unconnected at first, are all linked to the forgotten spaceship orbiting above them.
The structure of the play, fragmented into over 30 scenes, forces the audience to focus on the intensity of the interaction between the characters “in the moment”, and the play relies on the actors’ capacity to earnestly portray this. The cast rises to the challenge, most notably with the performances of the astronauts – Will Lewis and Mark Mindel – who are immediately convincing as a pair who have spent many years in only each other’s company. Bailey says, “Thankfully, they’ve got to know each other quite well now” and this is evident, particularly in the comedic episodes which struck me as very relaxed and natural.
Emma D’Arcy and Edward Wingfield’s strength lies in their body language: the awkwardness of their first encounter could be physically felt as they appeared on stage. Depicting the relationship between two people unable to understand each other’s language was particularly demanding for Wingfield who had to rapidly swap between French accent (when his character was attempting to speak English) and English accent (when “speaking French”). This technique was not immediately obvious, but worked well, particularly with D’Arcy’s responses. Despite moments where I wished a pause to be slightly longer, or the intonation hit the wrong note, the actors’ performances seemed faultless.
While at first the episodes might appear disjointed, each is well rounded, and could be a miniature setpiece in itself. The performance is held together partially through Frankie Meadows’ soundscaping, who will be mixing naturalistic sounds with his own music live on each night of the performance, tailoring it in response to the actors and the audience. The set promises to convey the expansiveness of space through projecting the starry sky onto the backdrop, which will alternate with other set projections to make one scene distinct from another. Scenes occurring in space will all be set downstage, so that even when we are witnessing the scenes on Earth, they would be seen through the lens of the astro- nauts’ experiences.
The cosmonaut’s… will be on in 5th week at the O’Reilly, and from what I have seen, it promises to be a striking and human performance.
