Writer: Aliya Gilmore
Directors: Aaron Rozanski and Auguste Voulton
Aliya Gilmore’s Laika takes a big swing in humanising not only the Russian scientists, who in the name of science shot a dog into space, but also the historic canine herself. She is still considered to be one of the first living things to leave Earth and venture into the stars. While this swing doesn’t miss its target altogether, it doesn’t deliver the mighty emotional and philosophical homerun that the writing tries to convince you it scores. With that said. the journey, the performances, impressive staging and enveloping soundscape manage to immerse the audience across the hour runtime.
It is the mastering of these technical elements that stands out as one of the play’s strongest features and lets you excuse some of the grander-than-thou propositions of the script. A colourful spectrum of strobing and swilling lights blends with archive audio of space race reporting and an energetic, sometimes alarming, live score to create an energy and space that feels both massive and awe-inspiring, yet at times claustrophobic and anxiety-inducing.
The piece plays out as a single unbroken scene in which our dog, Laika, charmingly anthropomorphized by Isabel McGrady, and our scientist, a dark complicated portrayal from Ben Willows, gravitate in and out of each other’s space. Woven together are grand monologues about humanity’s juvenile ventures into the stars with emotive narrative exposition centred around Laika’s recruitment and gruelling preparation.
McGrady’s job is not an easy one. She, a grown adult actor, plays a stray dog. The creative choice to have her take the shape of a young child struck with wonder at the thought of touching the stars plays well and McGrady brings a believable innocence that warms us to her from the outset. We get a few animalistic ear scratches and scurries early in the piece but this actor-playing-animal feature could go further to create more moments of comical relief to play against what is occasionally a laborious script.
Willows’ scientist is a more complicated proposition for the audience to get on board with. The well-spoken RP Willows brings out the whole Russian-ness of it all and stands out against the ease of McGrady’s presence Both deliver the material well but are sometimes weighed down by the ambitious gravitas hung on their monologues. Parts of the first half drift into feeling like an extended speech delivered by Doctor Who in an eleventh-hour rallying-of-the-troops moment from the Stephen Moffat era.
The highlight of both performances comes at the dramatic apex of the show in which Willows repeats a Russian fairytale. The performances up until this point feel somewhat one-note from both but it is the cracks that emerge in both of their personas that create the layers which carry us through to the dark reflective epilogue, each broken by the events of the ill-fated mission.
The biggest issue with the piece is the confused discourse the play toils with. Monologues in the first half wrestle with questions of loneliness, both individual and planetary, the innocence of youth and intergalactic ambition. Yet by the final blackout, we are left questioning what the play really tries to say with its runtime. Was it worth it? Were the Russians wrong to non-consensually send a stray dog into space for the grand old name of science? Is all animal testing, animal consumption and basically anything other than hard veganism an assault on pristine human morality? Is one life a fair price to pay for strides forward in human history?
The play doesn’t wrestle with these questions as much as you do in the hours after the show. Instead what it does is takes you on an undoubtedly fun interstellar adventure in which the dark ending leaves us with the takeaway: poor wee dog, shame on us I guess?
Runs until 24 June 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
an immersive hour of space race human morality.
