Review: spacestation 1985 by Natalie George
by David Glen Robinson
The Off-Center is the homeland of the Rude Mechanicals theatre company, where that storied group has ridden their great performances to theatrical glory. So it is a little intimidating to walk in there with performance on one’s mind. Natalie George and Jeffrey Mills showed no sign of intimidation whatsoever when they rented the space from the Rudes and installed Spacestation 1985 in it. The piece is a laugh riot at its core, and it is a send-up of 1980s TV sci-fi, a send-up of the 1980s as a whole and a demonstration piece of alternative performance forms.
The story is light, but it is a surprisingly flexible vehicle for comedy. Two NASA rejects are hired by the private corporation, Dedalus, Inc, to pilot a private spaceship to Halley’s Comet to mine minerals from the tail of the comet—a typically flimsy, improbable 1980s premise, but who cares when the laughs start and seem not to end? The neatest trick of the play is that the producers fly past us a story that contains 1980s sci-fi futuristic technology and the story takes place in the 1980s. Now wait a second…hmm…
The play is two acts. The first is the lengthy trip to the comet, extremely boring for the characters but not for the audience. The spacecraft has only two crew members. They serve alternating 30-day shifts and don’t see each other because they enter hibernation chambers when they are off-shift. Of course, under their crushing boredom they enter committed relationships with potted plants, hallucinations and computer voice programs.
The second act is the flight away from the comet so desperate that the laugh riot becomes a scream riot. Both characters are onstage together at this time and express a little jealousy at the thought they may have been fascinated with the same inanimate object or program. But that’s just one funny splash in the flood of comedy.
The play has been under development in New York City since 2010. Producer Natalie George again displays her multiple talents, producing the show and also designing very colorful lighting sets that advance the story at every turn. Her feats are even more outstanding for using the Off-Center’s old warehouse wooden lighting grid that also serves as the rafters and ceiling joists of the place.
The writers of this comedy are listed as Jason Newman, who also enacted the character of Dr. Rick Gergen, Jeffery Mills and Brent Werzner. Their humor ranges from broad, slap-your-face vulgarities to dry 1980s trivia references that nobody got. That’s OK; the writing is full of fresh, funny content that people will want to see more than once so they can pick up more laughs.
The original music by Graham Reynolds and sound design by Buzz Moran stayed strictly in keeping with the theme, and together they form a consistent sonic background to the action. Rare 80s pop music hits played as house music had the audience singing along. Reynolds in particular must have been pleased at having the chance to go Star Trek: the Next Generation one better. He made good on the opportunity.
The alternative performance form in the show is what I have described elsewhere as alt-puppetry, the newly resurgent form of the ancient mode of storytelling. Here, the puppeteers brought back shadow puppetry to good sci-fi effect in addition to 3-D work in different scales--small scenic figures and full-size figures. The puppeteers also manipulated the articulating, cheesy-for-effect spaceship set by Ia Ensterä. The puppeteers appear frequently in the programs of the Trouble Puppet and Physical Plant Theatre companies; they are David Higgins, Dallas Tate, Gricelda Silva, Rachel Dendy and Kelly Hasandras; puppet design credits go to James Godwin, Nate Wilson, Noel Gaulin and Katie Rose Pipkin.
Modern puppetry embraces exposed artifice in its designs, but wise choices are paramount. And here boldness of concept overreached and needed a little tweaking. Entrance ways were covered with black fabric, and throughout the show the fabrics would rustle aside as someone entered and hid somewhere. Many times I saw the black-clad arms, feet or legs of puppeteers move behind set furniture. These are distractions to me and I sat not far off the stage centerline where behind-stage concealment should have been perfect. I think my eye should not have been drawn to those movements. They were especially distracting when out front a lonely astronaut was declaiming his isolation; a few of the incidents were severe enough to pop the bubble of story-magic surrounding the hard-working stage actor.
Others might not be so easily distracted, and my mood may have been a little cranky. On balance, the differing forms worked together to produce a whole artistic work of high imagination. The talents pouring themselves into this production deserve more credit than I can give them here or than they sometimes received on the program. Bradley Carlin’s Lt. Norman J. Kilroy was sparklingly funny, never more so than when he entered wearing his astronaut’s tunic on his head as a somewhat more-than-over-the-top pirate hat. Flamboyant? Extra flambo on the yant, please. In voice work, Dallas Tate seems to have perfected the gusty, booming, wheezy, coughing, funny intonations of old men. The voice-over work of Jennymarie Jemison was sexy, certainly more than adequate to torture a lonely astronaut.
Spacestation 1985 is a satisfying blend of talents and forms; it is especially recommended for those interested in new forms of puppetry. We welcome even more work from producers Natalie George and Jeffery Mills.
EXTRAS
Click to view clever Kickstarter video featuring Natalie George and Jeffrey Mills
Click to read feature on Nerlocker.com with interview of Jeffrey Mills, September 12
spacestation 1985
by Jeffrey Mills, Jason Newman, Brent Werzner
Natalie George Productions
2211-A Hidalgo Street
near Robert Martinez and E. 7th Street, behind Joe's Bakery
Austin, TX, 78702
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