Turn, Turn, Turn

Four travellers aboard a spaceship, bound for ‘Earth 8’, a new world and, they hope, a new life.  And yet each inevitably brings their past with them.  That is, when (if?) they reach ‘Earth 8’, will they be the same flawed humans as set out?  Even their rushed, queue-jumping escape from devastated ‘Earth 7’ is tainted by the dodgy means each has employed to be aboard this old space freighter…

The set – the old freighter interior - is designed by director Renee Palmer and Tom Brayshaw.  Budget considerations aside, it’s not like the bridge in Alien, Star Trek or the Star Wars movies; it’s very basic and drab but curiously spacious – hardly claustrophobic.  There’s a big screen to show the outside world, as in all spaceship movies, a couch and a fancy recliner chair. 

Curiously, there are only two crew (edgy Sarah Hartnell and relaxed, ironic Eben Rojter) and two passengers (anxious Melanie Audrey and tentative Sodi Murphy-Shrives) who are an ambivalent couple. 

When the ‘captain’ (Hartnell) is at the control panel, there are no flashing lights, not even on their face.  An archway across and above the stage, almost like a proscenium arch, lights up as the journey proceeds, depending on circumstance.  There are occasional ominous sounds indicative of engine problems suggesting the precarity of going from one planet to another in a clapped-out old freighter – but those sounds turn out to be bogus jeopardy because we expect a catastrophe or at least an obstacle, but nothing happens.  Nor is there much acknowledgement of how long it might take to go from one planet to another…

I mention these things - clearly conscious decisions by director and co-designer – because Turn, Turn, Turn is not a sci-fi drama in space but, as I infer, an allegory and this creaking spaceship and the journey in it are metaphors.  A more ‘real’ spaceship might be a distraction from the important and very timely questions playwright Keith Gow wants to ask – questions both for us and for our world. 

Can we just abandon a ruined world?  What excuses will we make when we do?  Will we, or would we, change ourselves in a new world (assuming one were available)?  What kind of relationships will happen, or can be endured, during a time of transition?  How much would we regret the past?  And how much of it might we take with us?  When the spaceship lands, will the first people we meet be ourselves? 

Principally, this play is not about the heist of a space freighter, and its journey to ‘Earth 8’, but about us changing ourselves and how difficult that can be.

But so intent is Keith Gow to ask these questions and to make sure that we get it, that character and story seem to take second place.  There are traces here of Tarkovsky’s space station drama Solaris in the way the past can persist and haunt us, and of Sartre’s Huis Clos in the way our fellow travellers, trapped like us, can get on our nerves, but such elements need more edge here, need more genuine conflict.  Despite some spirited acting from the cast Turn, Turn, Turn becomes rather static and repetitious.  When the play is over, we remember the questions, the issues raided, but not so much the characters and their emotional engagements.  Surely the story of these characters on their spaceship needs to stand on its own.

Michael Brindley