★★☆☆☆
Two Stars
What is The Aleph, and what significance does it hold for the salvation of humankind? This is the ominous question posed by the opening of this new, student-written production, performed within the tense confines of the Burton Taylor. Sadly, however, the intrigue is short-lived.
We find ourselves in the future, where the titular Aleph – a mysterious device with the power to end an apocalyptic, all-consuming war – has landed in the hands of the enemy. Stealing it back will require a crack team of spies capable of infiltrating their ranks and stealing the Aleph right from beneath their noses. Unfortunately for the world, however, it is instead perplexingly entrusted to a group of clichéd military ‘specialists’, none of whom have ever met and all of whom seem to hate one another for no particular reason.
The Aleph is plagued by a total lack of likeable or relatable characters, and this is largely due to the dialogue. The actors are all fine; they might even be great but get few chances to show it, because their lines fail them at every turn. A notable example is Junks, who seems to have been intended as a loveable rogue but comes off instead as a childish nuisance. More insufferable still is Lawson, who is inexplicably angry all the time and prone to jarring changes of attitude, and whom the script awkwardly tries to make us sympathise with by having him constantly spout off about his two children back home. Comparatively consistent characters like Tom, Captain Evans, and Madison (who comes closest to being likeable but gets used to little purpose) do not manage to make up for these shortfalls, and often get dragged down by clumsy melodrama. Some lines even come off as unintentionally funny – including, unfortunately, the last one.
Ultimately, for this story to work, we needed The Aleph itself to draw us further into the plot. Had there been a building sense of foreboding around the object then we might have felt some sort of tension. Instead it serves as no more than a lazy plot device in a play with little plot – a sci-fi element that is used to no effect save at the end, where we are told in one lengthy and uninspired monologue exactly what it does. The one hope for real tension is rapidly vaporised, and though the acting and the direction manages to hold things together sufficiently, there is never much for us to care about or become invested in.
