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Solaris by David Greig
Photo: Pia Johnson
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Arriving on a space station orbiting the planet Solaris, Kris Kelvin (Leeanna Walsman) is confronted by beings who are almost human, while digging through the digital archives of Dr Gibarian (Hugo Weaving), who recently died. She must try to understand what these creatures are and what other mysteries lie on the planet below, under the roiling oceans that cover its surface.
Like the Malthouse’s other current production, Wake in
Fright, David Grieg’s new play is based on a novel that has also previously
been a film. In fact, Stanislaw Lem’s book has been adapted into two films,
several operas and a play or two before this. It’s no surprise that it would
inspire great filmmakers and playwrights to bring their own versions to life;
alien entities, memory and lost loved ones are all rich elements with which to
explore the themes of loneliness and otherness.
Designer Hyemi Shin creates a cool, minimalist environment that’s
efficiently modular; its swiftly moving doors and sliding panels evoking a kind
of futuristic haunted house. Paul Jackson’s lighting puts the characters under
the harshest of fluorescent white until the station rotates through blue and red
nights, as Solaris orbits two suns.
Director Matthew Lutton creates a wide-screen image, evoking
his first encounter with the text – Andrei Tartovsky’s 1972 film version. But
surprisingly, the only imagery on the Malthouse stage that really captures the
strange allure of the original film is the interstitial appearances of Solaris’
watery expanse. Lutton’s work is usually so rich and beguiling, it’s strange to
encounter a work of his that feels so prosaic.
Grieg’s script goes back to the source material, stranding us
on the space station and putting us in Kris Kelvin’s shoes. Kelvin has been a
man in all other versions of story; here the character is a woman, played with the
right levels of inquisitiveness and slow-building horror by Walsman. Equally
intriguing is Keegan Joyce, playing a recreation of Kelvin’s lover – whose slow
tilt into existential horror about his own nature is compelling to watch.
This is a co-production between the Malthouse and the Royal
Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh; Lutton and Grieg are these company’s respective
Artistic Directors. This collaboration sees British actors Jade Ogugua and Fode
Simbo playing the other human residents of the station, though the characters
seem written as types more than intriguing human beings. Ogugua gets to dig a
little deeper with a late monologue about monkeys and paint and human faces on
paper that gets right to the heart of the mystery before them.
Science fiction on stage shouldn’t come about so rarely;
characters isolated in a single space, exploring what it means to be human and
the nature of existence feels deeply theatrical to me. After some slow set up, and
once Kelvin starts to lose her perspective with the appearance of her lover,
the show finds its orbit and speeds toward an emotional climax. There were
moments late in the play where the struggle with loneliness and lost love hit
me hard and it was completely unexpected when some earlier parts of the
production felt so sterile and antiseptic.
Something about Solaris captured me and by the end, I
didn’t want to go.
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