The most indelible moment of the Denver Center Theatre Company’s new space odyssey, “When Tang Met Laika,” happens the instant contact is lost with the doomed shuttle Columbia. The very second the lights go out on pilot Bill McCool, another harried astronaut’s wife in Texas turns on the mixer for a pie she’s making with a secret ingredient — two scoops of Tang, natch.
The actress is standing not 8 feet from the hero who in actuality died 175 miles above Earth. But the stage proximity and sound overlap make for a theatrically perfect moment, because in the immediate aftermath, the heart of the entire nation was aboard Columbia.
Unfortunately, Rogelio Martinez’s new play isn’t about McCool. It’s about Patrick, a brooding, fictional astronaut torn between his wife and two lovers — a Russian cosmonaut and space itself.
In taking on space as a theatrical construct, the DCTC is boldly going where few theater companies have gone before. What results is a deeply human and always interesting piece to watch.
But as storytelling, it’s a bit like an untethered space walk. It’s a choppy, episodic mishmash of exposition and dreams that never really decides what its primary mission is. It’s a ghost story, science lecture, theology debate, history lesson and soap opera all at once. It shifts abruptly, and it has no idea how to end.
But it’s very, very seductive to just sit back and take in.
The round stage floor is cut into four circles. In a smart, simple solution to the zero- gravity challenge, these circles move slowly and in opposite directions to create a sort of horizontal floating effect. Six screens project video images to complement the space effect while keeping our focus squarely on the actors. The constant motion supports the play’s overall theme — one man’s search for connection that’s always a galaxy, or the tip of the finger, out of reach.
The play is set in the post- Cold War era of wary cooperation between the U.S. and Russian space programs. Patrick (Ian Merrill Peakes) is a married astronaut who’s invited onto the Russian space station Mir, where he meets Elena (Jessica Love), niece of the Soviet space hero Yuri Gagarin (R. Ward Duffy).
But oddly, we’re only told, rather than shown, that these two fall in love, or at least he with her. Most scenes are too short to let the emotional glue harden.
Back on the ground, Patrick struggles to fit in with the life and wife he left behind. Samantha (the endearing Megan Byrne) has gotten used to living a double life — as an efficient single mother for one half of the year; a doting armpiece the other.
Patrick isn’t so much caught between worlds — he considers space his true home and Earth a place he’s just visiting. But he’s also a father with responsibilities and great privilege, so his whining about his lack of place grows tiresome.
The playwright clearly wants us rooting for Patrick and Elena, but their bond is based more on common than shared experience. We want to be rooting for a husband and wife who belong together.
The dialogue often feels like artificial conversations between characters. They, and we, are being talked at constantly. Even intimate, two- way discussions seem aimed not at each other but at that shadowy third person in the room — us.
So we have a love story that feels weightless, and a devastating slice of real history in Columbia that comes down right after intermission, rendering all that follows trivial.
The most delightful, if forced, conceit turns out to be two strange and completely metaphorical characters engaged in their own kind of love story. Orbiting a few miles above the rest of the story are M. Scott McLean and Richard Thieriot playing, in effect, the U.S. and Russia as two young, retired businessmen.
They are the two Cold War powers personified — former enemies now forced to get along. Now they compete at shuffleboard. They bicker over politics. The U.S. even harbors a secret crush, and hits on Russia in a gay bar.
It’s as tangential as everything else in the play. But it works.
“When Tang Met Laika” is an intriguing play, pulsing with potential and wonder. It succeeds best at staging the Columbia tragedy, and putting the immediate, awkward aftermath of the Cold War into historical context.
But for now, it’s also a play with no identifiable center of gravity.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“When Tang Met Laika” **1/2 (out of four stars)
Space drama. Presented by the Denver Center Theatre Company at the Space Theatre, 14th and Curtis streets. Written by Rogelio Martinez. Directed by Terry Nolen. Through Feb. 27. 2 hours, 35 minutes. 6:30 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays; 7:30 p.m. Fridays; 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays; and 1:30 p.m. Sundays. $18-$51. 303-893-4100 (800-641-1222 outside Denver), at all King Soopers or
