Static

Dan Gordon in Static. Image, Rich Davenport

**

In the dark ages known as the 1970s several fads came into fashion that died as soon as they found their feet. Clackers, Sea Monkeys and citizen band radio, popularly known as CB radio, to name but a few. Immortalised by the regrettable movie Convoy, the real time communication preference for long-distance truck drivers, CB radio, briefly enjoyed mainstream attention in the late 70s, beloved by criminals and creeps alike. With the advent of the burner phone the criminals moved on. With the advent of the encrypted laptop the creeps soon followed. Unless you happen to be Moonman, a contemporary, middle-aged, detestable slob story from Co. Donegal. Through weakly contrived circumstances, inspired by a real life incident from 1991, Moonman picks up an emergency signal on his CB radio from astronaut Captain Slane. A handsome veteran who, in a fit of rage, smashed his comms and needs emergency assistance before his craft drifts out into space. Slane managing to find the one person with a home based CB radio tuned to his channel in the era of chat rooms. Who is also the last person you would ever turn to in an emergency. Who, conveniently, is a space enthusiast. Over several tensionless orbits they discuss their lives, the universe and everything in between. Jimmy McAleavey’s hugely ambitious Static proving a weak comedy masquerading as a weaker drama, overflowing with low level, existentialist angst.

For millennia, space and its constellations were entwined with myth and mystery. Until science came along, jettisoned myth for facts yet retained the language of mystery. Black holes, event horizons, the infinity of the infinite, is there a point, meaning, purpose to it all if we're just atoms and stardust haphazardly assembled that dies in the end? Static’s pop science, buzz words delivering a trivialised intro for anyone with even a remote interest in time, space and philosophy. Exploring loneliness, communications, particularly between men, of being too afraid to live yet too afraid to die, and touching on protected categories like mental health, its existential angst opens not into an abyss so much as a pothole. As for technology, its ideas would have looked dated in the 1970s. Meanwhile, the detestable Moonman sets representations of agoraphobia back fifty years, suggesting that all that’s really needed is willpower. Weak, made to fit arguments avoiding meaningful engagement with where was the willpower when you really needed it? But agoraphobia was never Moonman’s problem, as a clanging in a desk drawer makes clear. Rather, it’s the lies we tell ourselves, and the second rate philosophical and psychological reasons with which we justify ourselves to ourselves. Lying about our lies to justify self-created dramas whilst convincing ourselves we’re pursing the truth. Which, arguably, could serve as an apt description of Static. Or of art perhaps.

Seán Mahon in Static.  Image, Rich Davenport

As if realising there isn’t enough meat on the script, Alyson Cummins packs the stage with radio tech so it not only feels claustrophobic but looks like it’s trying to overcompensate by pushing everything forward to conceal dead space. Meanwhile Suzie Cummins’ lights inject the mystery and mood the script lacks. Tom King’s direction sees weak comedy undercutting the possibility of dramatic tension. Performances also uneven. Dan Gordon’s Moonman a superb Billy No Mates with a CB radio that no one wants to speak with. Not because of his agoraphobia, but because he’s selfishly reprehensible. Gordon brilliantly articulating a truly self-centered character having little to like and even less to pity, which McAleavey is to be commended for not shirking away from. If only Seán Mahon’s Spaceman, a heavy breathing, honours graduate from the William Shatner School of slow-motion overacting, didn’t evoke a Star Trek cut out; Spaceman proving a likeable if uneasy foil. The whole making for some contrived asks you don’t quite buy into. The end result a theatrically cramped, dramatically dull production that’s philosophically and psychologically suspect.

If Static refers to the white noise Slane uses to block out silence, McAleavey’s verbal white noise often blocks out those deeper, human resonances Static claims to seek. Unless King’s point was to recreate an experience of being trapped inside your head with random thoughts running wild and no possibility of escape, in which case Static succeeds brilliantly. Ensuring that if the only other option is to drift out into space, you might consider it. Except it never is the only other option. Indeed, Static had real existential fish to fry speaking to the human condition. Yet ultimately it trades addressing the lives we live, both good and bad, against all those lives we never get to live for a Hallmark moment to boldly go where you’ve never gone before and live your very best life. Even as it never seems to know quite what that is.

Static by Jimmy McAleavey, runs at The Peacock Stage of The Abbey Theatre until July 18.

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