The artists performed their respective functions well, and created some striking effects. What they lacked were the skills of a gifted playwright. Thus, the story was repeated over and over again in a smooth succession of scenes: a crew of four must master a new machine or perish.
Through lights, movements, ropes, pulleys, and sound, the company created a colorful set design of machinery environments (battleship, tank, tractor, bomber, locomotive, oil tanker, spacecraft, and submarine) out of some exercise and weight-lifting equipment. The performers used the equipment, and the spaces within and between the various machines, to create imaginative environments, turning a rowing seat into a Geiger counter, a handle into a gun, or free weights into bombs.
What they accomplished in these environments was less subtle. If they were in a ship, it was going down. ("Keep pumping, one actor says, repeatedly.) If they were in a train, they tried to stop it. If they moved through a small space, one of them got stuck. And then unstuck, without much else going on or at stake.
The players seemed to improvise their dialogue, sometimes all at once for a musical effect, sometimes inaudibly, sometimes repetitiously and meanderingly. Thus, they failed to create meaningful relationships between themselves that would encourage us to care about their fates -- which were also not always clear.
Wandesforde-Smith, the most extroverted of the actors, created a consistent character throughout: a sort of a manic adolescent dominating others and expressing wonder. The other actors were much lower keyed, mainly up to performing their tasks efficiently.
The elaborate lighting effects were particularly effective, creating inner spaces, doors, window slits, and rooms; or welders creating light and smoke (through the use of sparklers), which lent a mysterious atmosphere to the stage. The skilled back lighting, and especially the use of a strobe light, so rarely effective, worked very well in this piece.
The music, performed live (off stage) on a synthesizer, with recorded elements (such as a countdown in the Russian language), combined the raucous cacophony of banging metal gymnasium apparatus with the drone of an airplane, the sounds of a workout gym, train whistles, the science fiction effects of spaceship movies, or sometimes just background music vamped aimlessly and ethereally.
Overall, this play suggested that it is a fallacy to think that if you call something performance art you don't need a playwright.
Copyright 1999 Marshall Yaeger