Review: THE INCREDIBLY SCARY OBJECT, Jack Studio Theatre

Alien abduction stories are as old as, well, The Pyramids I suppose, but it’s only recently that the deed could be done not only on Earth, where scientists can easily look for evidence (crop circles anyone?) and grainy (always grainy) video can be the 21st century version of the Loch Ness monster photos. With ever more man-made materials in space, what if the abduction is beyond our atmosphere? The truth is out (really a long way out) there.

Such is the premise of Joe Edgar’s new play, one part Twilight Zone, one part wisecracking knockabout comedy, one part epistemological inquiry. It doesn’t all work, but it doesn’t all fail either, across all three elements.

There’s a uniquely static object stuck in space beyond lunar orbit and it has a hole in it. We’re in a news conference run by NASA, who sent a probe and ISCA who built it and have now lost it. Not without a little tension, both organisations are trying to present a plausible cover story for the world’s press that doesn’t lose too much face nor panic the natives with the possibility that the hole in the object is actually a home in the object. 

There’s also a wildcard amongst the rocketmen and stargazers (sorry engineers and scientists,) NASA’s writer-in-residence who acts as a kind of one man Greek Chorus whilst attempting to choke off the media’s speculative narratives before they leave the launchpad.

Everyone has a lot of fun. Eddie Mann gets to raise plenty of eyebrows as the cynical novelist and delve into knowledge about knowledge, while April Storm Perry frets about chairing the conference surrounded by loose cannons and outrageous speculations. As the NASA boys, Joe Edgar has written himself as a sardonic Oxbridge man, a little weary of all the excitement and Alex Crook is, naturally, his temperamental opposite, all demonstrative certainty and no-nonsense exclamations at 100mph. The ISCA team comprise Xavier Starr as a slow-melting German romantic (think Caspar David Friedrich’s The Wanderer) and Sydney Crocker’s earnest Danish astronomer, as keen to stick to her guns as was her compatriot, Tycho Brahe, over 500 years earlier.

Though it’s supplemented by some nice video work and suitably mysterious music from Stanley Welch, director, Jessy Roberts, is a little boxed-in by the format. At 95 minutes, the play is too long for its bickering, suspense and disquisitions on deductions to sustain our attention without occasional flagging. The current trend towards interval-free productions hurts shows like this because a break to gather one’s thought and hear other voices is not just welcome, it’s essential.

The play comes with an attached mini-manifesto, which isn’t a bad one.

“Sosij Productions is an energetic new theatre company, founded on a shared desire to make drama in which:

A) Characters are as funny, humane, unreasonable and performative as real people are.

B) As much value is placed on romance as on ideas, and on facetiousness as on wit.

C) Something really odd happens.”

The Incredibly Scary Object is true to those maxims and shows their potential. One hopes that the company’s next project can tighten the focus a little, rein in some of the ambition and succeed in delivering the compelling theatre that is never quite sustained in the conference room this time.

The Incredibly Scary Object at the Jack Studio Theatre until 31 August

Photo Credits: Sosij Productions

To post a comment, you must register and login.