review #9: little eagles (rona munro)

{me + andrea at "little eagles", just off the swiss cheese--i mean swiss cottage--stop.}

little eagles is the story of sergei pavlovich korolyov, the man behind sputnik and the other ingenious Soviet cosmonaut endeavors.  it is an important story, with important questions:

1) what is worth sacrificing your life for?  what is worth sacrificing others' lives for?

2) how can you memorialize the dead, the brave, and the lost?

3) where is the balance between achieving greatness and enjoying the simplicity of a quiet life--an apartment, a yellow wall, sunshine.

here's what i thought of the production:  the aesthetics were great.  a big metal sheath for the rocket.  interesting the ways metal appeared and reappeared throughout the play.  

i also liked the moments when the cosmonauts were suspended in space on stage.  and the accuracy to the historic moments in the story.  i thought the acting was pretty good, and that their choice to not use russian accents was a wise one.  made us feel like we were on the same side of the fence as the actors, not outsiders looking into the story.  as did the opening with stalin delivering his gulag speech to us the audience.

now.  i would have liked to have felt a stronger emotional connection to sergei's character.  i left feeling pity for him, but not the sense that i had seen some deeply human something within him.  i guess that's what i live for in theatre: moments when i see that "thing" in the character.  that's why, despite its flaws, i still cried in "children's hour": there was that moment when i felt what joe cardin was feeling.  with sergei, he was such an intense character the entire play that i had a really hard time having those glimpses into the human tick-tickings of his little soul.  granted, i understand there is a cultural difference between russian expressions of emotion and american ones.  so to for

k i just got distracted by people returning home to talk about the plays they went to today.  when i looked back at my computer, i'd typed "so to for".  i have absolutely no idea where i was going with that.

human tick-tickings.  okay.  sergei's character was very intense.  i wanted some softer moments.  that's all.