Static
Peacock stage, Abbey Theatre, Dublin
★★★☆☆
In 1991 Sergei Krikalev was launched into space on what was meant to be a four-month mission. But by then the Soviet Union had collapsed, and the country that had promised to bring him home no longer existed. Remarkably, during the 10 months for which the cosmonaut was left stranded aboard the Mir space station, he managed to make contact with a handful of amateur radio operators, including a man in rural Ireland.
It’s the kind of archival news story that’s irresistible to a writer. Unsurprisingly, it caught the imagination of Jimmy McAleavey, who used it as a springboard for Static. But this is not a dramatisation of those events. Instead the play fictionalises this moment of unlikely connection, turning it into something more allegorical and, sadly, a bit flatter.
Visually, the production is captivating. Alyson Cummins’s set is simple but powerful, a retro technological dreamscape of blinking devices, stacked in the dark, that evoke circuit boards, night cities and distant constellations. On one side of the stage sits Moonman, a lonely recluse in Donegal, played with an unexpectedly tender touch by Dan Gordon. On the other is Spaceman, the archetypal all-American action hero, played with just the right note of performative tinniness by Seán Mahon. Between them spins a glowing toy Earth.
An acute problem has arisen. Spaceman, stranded in a failing space station, has lost all official channels of communication and will soon drift fatally off course unless someone on Earth intervenes. That someone, unfortunately, is Moonman, who’s too anxious to leave his home, let alone persuade anyone that he’s in touch with a dying astronaut.
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Even if he could bring himself to call for help, who would believe him? And perhaps, deep down, he doesn’t really want to save him. Perhaps he’s so starved of conversation that he’d rather keep him talking, suspended in a shared solitude.
The characters are drawn from different tonal universes. This contrast brings flashes of humour and unexpected lyricism. McAleavey’s dialogue is attuned to the strange intimacy of radio and to the intoxicated grandeur of early American space mythology: the endless frontier, the dream of expansion, the boyish hope and the looming void.
But the arc of the play is ultimately too neat. To return to Earth, Spaceman must coax Moonman out of isolation. They both need the other to return to the world. The two men are revealed to be more alike than different: both ruled by fear, one hiding in his room, the other in space.
There’s a satisfying symmetry to the structure, but it leans toward the schematic. Dichotomies are set up and then cleanly reversed. The psychological unravelling tracks on a level of sense but never feels true on an experiential or emotional level.
The problem is partly formal: the dialogue-heavy structure becomes an exhaustive sounding-out of themes rather than a dramatic unfolding. It begins to feel, aptly, static. Still, there are moments when the play seems to catch a strange and poignant frequency, something bruised, offbeat and humane.
Static is at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, until Friday, July 18th
