THEATRE
140 Million Miles
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
TWO STARS
Ah, space...The final frontier beyond which probability factors rarely venture, and where gravity takes a hike that leaves plot-lines dangling in mid-air.
Dawn and Neil have applied to be the first couple on Mars. Childhood sweethearts – now married and in their early thirties – the pair are not your usual astronaut material. But then this isn’t your usual space programme. It’s an extreme case of reality television and the couple’s working-class ordinariness and outspoken dissatisfactions – he drives a taxi, her call-centre job has been relocated to China, they can’t afford a home of their own so are living with her mum – are the ideal stuff of prurient, invasive viewing.
Rosie Mason (Dawn) and Darren Seed (Neil) balance enthusiasm and gullibility with a gloss of conviction that makes you smile at their naivete even if you don’t believe it. No-one is that dopey, so writer Adam Peck weaves in a back-story to explain why they’ve bought into the escapist dream of going to Mars. Dawn’s obsessive desire for a baby has come to naught, despite endless attempts and IVF treatments they could ill afford. In space, they will be free of all that: they’’ll be pioneers, famous.
With Sonny and Cher’s ‘I got you babe’ as their theme song, they blast off – but, as you have no doubt anticipated, it all comes unstuck. Were they deceived and manipulated by the organisers? Was it self-deception? Did society let them down? Does this cod-fantasy say anything meaningful about how people cope with disappointments in their life? Space is full of black holes... it’s only the whole-hearted performances by Mason and Seed that keep our interest in this sliver of a play from diving into one.
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