Delightfully absurd space odyssey
Space Opera Zero
(out of 4) Written by Eric Woolfe. Directed by Dylan Trowbridge. Until Dec. 2 at the Red Sandcastle Theatre, 922 Queen St. E. eldritchtheatre.ca
There’s nothing about Thomas Middleton’s17th-century tragedy The Changeling that screams to be adapted into a space odyssey with aliens, queer heroes, music and puppetry — but then again, there’s nothing that implores one not to.
Writer and performer Eric Woolfe, director Dylan Trowbridge and the indie company Eldritch Theatre are the brave theatre-makers that thought “why not?” — and the result is more delightfully absurd than it has any right to be. As the title suggests, Space Op
era Zero is inspired by the space opera genre of melodrama.
In essence, it’s a soap opera in space: all of the drama, but with the added danger of interplanetary warfare and lasers.
The high end of the space opera is the Star Wars universe and, on the lower end, where Space Opera Zero proudly sits, are pulpy magazines from the 1920s and ’30s, such as Galaxy Science Fiction and Le Zombie.
The recognizable plot — borrowing Middleton’s basic structure of boy meets girl, girl hires ugly servant to murder her arranged fiancé, servant blackmails girl into sex, everyone devolves into more murder and sex and lies until one final bloodbath — is heightened by an esthetic debt to early Star Trek space travellers and humanoid aliens, with set and costumes by Melanie McNeill, sound by Christopher Stanton and lighting by Michael Brunet.
The beautifully low-budget visuals — think of the Dolly Parton adage “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap” — are paired with a crude, bawdy sense of humour that keeps the space-age artistic ambitions firmly on a homebase level.
This critic loves an Elizabethan tragedy, but there’s something about a mad scientist’s angry soliloquy — including “Foiled! Foiled up the bum” (performed by Woolfe as one of his many characters, human and alien) — that absolutely tickled me.
But it’s not all potty humour; Woolfe’s script mixes high and low in ambitiously Middleton-like speeches delivered by Woolfe, Lisa Morton (a former Shaw Festival actor) as glass-ceiling-breaking female space pilot Emily Trueheart and Mairi Babb (known from War Horse) as the alien princess of Emily’s dreams, Jenora.
Of course, you won’t find phrases like “a hymen’s vows” or “fecal stink that woos the buzzing flies” in Middleton, but the effort in these sections betray the team’s care for their source material — even if the sincerity feels out of place coming from a human mouth and much more natural from a strange dog-man.
Known primarily for their Halloween horror-themed puppet shows like Madhouse Variations (which won McNeill a Dora Award for her design), Eldritch Theatre’s style of intricately crafted puppetry and magic finds an appropriate niche in sci-fi melodrama, performed in a tiny storefront theatre in Leslieville.
It may be modest and quirky, but Eldritch’s artistry in puppets and physical effects punches above its weight — one moment will make your jaw drop as it literally rips a heart out. Take a chance on this space odyssey.