Heinz Hermann Koelle (Laura Boston Edwards, entrance left) and Arthur Rudolph (Suzanne Roush, entrance proper) react to one thing offstage whereas William A. Mrazek (Imani Joseph, rear left) and Helmut Hoelzer (Vallea E. Woodbury, rear proper) are exhausting at work. (All pictures by Casey Gardner Ford)
“How the rockets have been constructed issues” is each thesis and rallying cry in Crystal Skillman’s The Rocket Males, a brand new play kicking off its rolling world premiere at Synchronicity Theatre via November 2. This story of complicity, denial and historic revision challenges the foundations of certainly one of our nation’s biggest scientific achievements whereas asking what horrors we’re prepared to miss within the identify of progress.
The Rocket Males investigates the historical past of Operation Paperclip, a program initiated by the U.S. authorities within the wake of World Struggle II, during which a group of German scientists who had collaborated with the Nazi celebration have been introduced over to work on American rockets, ultimately turning into accountable for the mission that put the primary man on the moon.
Skillman makes the selection to heart the narrative on the connection between Wernher von Braun (Amelia Fischer), the chief of the group, and new recruit Heinz-Hermann Koelle (Laura Boston Edwards). What begins as a mentor-mentee dynamic turns into fraught as Koelle, the one member of the group prepared to acknowledge the horrors their nation dedicated, learns extra about von Braun’s involvement with the Nazis.
The playwright additionally selected for the solely male characters to be performed by an all-female solid. Whereas this resolution might really feel distracting for a portion of the present, Skillman rigorously conceals her hand till the final minute, at which level the aim of this machine turns into devastatingly clear.
The Rocket Males is the kind of play that one appreciates extra so throughout reflection than through the precise viewing expertise. The play is sluggish, dry and at occasions too cerebral. Its message — that progress can’t happen with out first reckoning with the previous — is obvious from the outset, nevertheless it drags its ft reaching any sort of conclusion.
Nevertheless, as soon as that conclusion is reached, the dramatic, emotional affect is so compelling that it practically smooths out any bumps within the highway. Skillman has managed a finale so highly effective that it’s definitely worth the worth of admission by itself.
How are the rockets constructed? What ugly chapters of our historical past can we gloss over just because the result’s that we get to go to the moon? The script intelligently grapples with this query, asking whether or not the brighter future that von Braun waxes poetic about is even potential with out accountability for the sins he and the opposite Nazi collaborators dedicated.
This manufacturing’s message is conveyed with the assistance of a really top-notch solid. Fischer nails the sort of self-important charisma that enables von Braun to maneuver via the world with out acknowledging his crimes, whereas Edwards does an awesome job of grounding us within the story.
The central powerhouse of the story, nonetheless, is Gillian Rabin as Sol Weissman, an American Jewish engineer who joins NASA and strikes up a friendship with Koelle. The opposite performers embody their roles effectively, however it’s Fischer, Edwards and Rabin who make up the emotional core of the narrative.
Director Rachel Might does good work build up the camaraderie amongst these males, making us consider of their ardour for his or her mission. One factor that’s lacking, nonetheless, is a way of time passing — because the story spans a number of many years, it’s typically exhausting for the viewers to situate itself inside the play’s timeline.
Might works in live performance with scenic designer Gabby Stephenson Trice, lighting designer Elisabeth Cooper and projections designer Benton Reed to imbue the manufacturing with a heightened meta-theatricality, making a Brechtian sense of detachment which units the stage for the finale’s revelation.
There are some flaws which might be exhausting to miss. The intermittent makes an attempt at humor are solely generally profitable, which doesn’t assist the notion that the play is overly dry. Nonetheless, on the heart of the story is a message all too related: that every part, irrespective of how fantastical or how private, is political, and no selection can ever be fully divorced from the context of the society that informs them.
The Rocket Males asks us, when our personal historical past, to query who has the best to inform our nation’s tales — the benefactors of our nation’s decisions, the survivors or the victims?
The place & When
The Rocket Males is at Synchronicity Theatre via November 2. Tickets vary from $10 to $45.
1545 Peachtree St. NE., Ste. 102
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Luke Evans is an Atlanta-based author, critic and dramaturg. He covers theater for ArtsATL and Broadway World Atlanta and has labored with theaters such because the Alliance, Actor’s Categorical, Out Entrance Theatre and Woodstock Arts. He’s a graduate of Oglethorpe College, the place he earned his bachelor’s diploma, and the College of Houston, the place he earned his grasp’s.