Part of the issue might be that I’m somewhat familiar with the story of Korolyov, having experienced a fascination with the Russian space race during my teenage years, a fascination reignited only a few years ago when I discovered the Lost Cosmonaut tapes. And I’m finding it difficult to evaluate what impact that had on my experience of the play or how I would have felt about it going in with no concept of what was to happen. In some places, it added a nice touch for me, there was a growing horror to my realisation of what Korolyov’s operation would lead to for example. But I feel mostly like I lost out – I was left with the situation where I didn’t learn anything new, the play stuck pretty closely to the known facts and I didn’t feel any more enlightened by the end than I was when I went in.
Truthfully I think they should have lied more... or rather, embroidered what we know. It’s the question of history vs. drama I suppose; I would have preferred a stronger focus on the latter. Some of the moments that worked best for me were the moments that went past this, that used more theatrical forms like the use of the ghosts haunting Korolyov at various points; or scenes unknown by history and inspired by the story itself – particularly the scene with the guinea pig and the scenes exploring the Doctor.
What it boils down to for me in the end was that after over three hours I didn’t feel like I knew Korolyov – I certainly liked him and Darrell D'Silva did an excellent job of fleshing the character out and adding dimensions – but I didn’t feel like the play delved deeply enough into his motivations. I still can’t tell you, in the context of the play, why Korolyov wanted to send people to space, what he felt about the Russia that had imprisoned him in a gulag for five years, what he thought about his family or his Little Eagles... though we were presented with some surface answers to these questions, they somehow never felt deep or truthful to me. And perhaps it’s not possible to do that but it made the piece feel shallow.
In fact, if I were writing this (though lets be honest, I’ve never written a play so I’m most likely way off), I think my solution would have been to remove Korolyov from the centre of the story – to keep him important but mysterious. Instead I would have focused on the Doctor, who I found fascinating, not least because of a superb performance by the always outstanding Noma Dumezweni (I might have even started the play with what currently stands as the final scene), and on the Little Eagles themselves – seeking to show the impact of Korolyov rather than his character, the ways he shaped and damaged them and to see the shattering impact of his death. If we can’t understand him we can admire him. I think that’s why Doctor Who, for example, is so reliant upon its companions. It’s near impossible to show a character like this from an internal perspective, but by showing the ripples they send out you can illuminate them a little.
There was also, I think, a difficulty in using some of the astronauts words themselves – which I believe were copied almost directly from the space flight records. Unfortunately the translations lacked poetry and though the actors occasionally managed to make it work the writing felt dull – the descriptions of space in this should sing, space should be the living beating heart of this piece for the audience. And whilst I thought the aerial work was a great way of representing some of the technical aspects of the flights – I particularly loved the way it was used to present Komarov’s crash, it also felt a bit sterile. I think this could have been greatly enriched by the use of projections. Similarly, I found the opening scenes in the gulag too stylised to really give me a sense of the horrors of it (though Dumezweni made up for that later for me). That said I did love the way they had the metallic curve of the rocket rising into the sky and dominating the stage.
What made this such a difficult thing to judge for me was that despite the weaknesses in the script there were some excellent performances that still made the play enjoyable and interesting to watch. As well as the already mentioned excellent D'Silva and Dumezweni, Brian Doherty also lit the stage up with his performance as Khrushchev and it was wonderful to finally see Dyfan Dwyfor given a chance to shine with a warm, charismatic and very real performance as Yuri Gagarin, a personal hero of mine. This was also definitely a strong ensemble effort and I found it very entertaining to watch the background performances, in fact sometimes I found it difficult not to – whether I was being distracted by Charles Aiken’s effeminate scientist or James Howard making “boom” faces or Joseph Arkley swigging from a bottle of vodka (actually I was impressed throughout with an interesting range of performances from Arkley).
In fact the only thing that really didn’t work for me in the performances was an otherwise nice sequence where Gagarin lands from his flight and encounters four Russian farmers, who had suddenly developed thick cod-Coronation Street accents and names like Rita. It made the scene somewhat ridiculous and reflects a problem I’ve found at the RSC recently, especially within some of the Shakespeare productions. Personally I’m a fan of Shakespeare spoken with regional accents and am incredibly pleased that this is an approach the RSC have followed, but increasingly what we’re seeing is regional accents being reserved for servants or the poor, with RP used for the wealthier and generally more important roles. I understand this is a convenient shorthand for class differences, but its one I personally find inelegant and if they are going to use accents as delineators, I would prefer they used it in familial/character based way.
Overall this was sadly a play that didn’t live up to the potential it showed, though it was saved by some excellent performances and the deft ensemble touch.
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