Darkside

Reviewed By Eric Marchese


Space exploration has never been more topical, what with NASA's
recent relaunching of the space shuttle after a 30-month delay aimed
at boosting safety. This staging of Darkside is thus well-timed. Ken
Jones' tale asks, "What if the December 1972 Apollo 17 mission
hadn't been the last to land men on the moon? What if there had been
an Apollo 18, 10 months later? What if two members of its crew
wound up stranded on the lunar surface, their crewmate anxiously
orbiting above?"

In director Sharyn Case's staging, Darkside is a perfectly
crafted mixture of sci fi, suspense, humor, and drama, as much
an examination of the "inner space"--what goes on inside the
mind, and heart, of an astronaut--as of the process of space
exploration. Ryan Harris captures the dread that roils just
below the stoic surface of Capt. Ed Stone as he struggles with
crippling panic attacks. Vince Campbell nails Commander Gerald
"Gunner" Smith's businesslike demeanor and his touchingly
poetic regard for the majesty of space. Capt. Bill Griffin is
the story's heart and soul, and Jay Michael Fraley invests him
with twin senses of conscience and terror at being isolated
while orbiting the moon, his swagger hiding the crushing guilt
he feels for the fate of his two friends.

Circling this trio are Jami McCoy and Coreen Milstein Mueller
as the lonely, neglected wives; Jonathon P. Markanday's quiet,
competent head of mission control; and Larry F. Scott's pushy,
underhanded reporter. Larry Evans' technical advisement and
Heather Enriquez's costumes provide authenticity.
Friday, August 12, 2005

Probing the 'Darkside' of space travel
Review: Ken Jones' gripping drama takes us to the moon,
and to the inner lives of U.S. astronauts.

By ERIC MARCHESE
Special to the Register

Even if the problems plaguing NASA's space shuttle mission
hadn't been so prominent in the news of late, Ken Jones'
"Darkside" would be no less gripping.
Could anyone other than an astronaut fathom the sort of mental
and emotional compartmentalization required to undertake
anything as hazardous as space exploration, then regard it as
routinely as just a job to be done?
Jones studies that mindset by examining the three-man crew of
the fictional Apollo 18 mission: a captain assigned to orbit
the moon in the spacecraft Independence and his buddies, the
mission commander and another captain sent to explore the
moon's surface in Yorktown, the lunar module.
At Rude Guerrilla Theater Company, director Sharyn Case
travels a familiar road with a script, and many of the same
cast members, she directed in the tale's West Coast premiere
at Huntington Beach Playhouse in 1997. Rude G's black-box
Empire Theater staging is more intimate, so that much more
compelling. We can see into the faces of these men as lines of
concern and, on occasion, fear, are etched into their normally
placid features.
It's October 1973, and Jones asks us to imagine that the
Apollo program, whose last mission, Apollo 17, was in December
1972, has continued.
Onto this what-if scenario Jones grafts a worst-case outcome:
When it comes time for the module to blast off and re-dock
with the spacecraft, its ignition and thrusters misfire.
Mission control is at a loss. The astronauts are in danger of
being permanently stranded, while their crewmate anxiously
orbits above, gripped with loneliness - especially when he
orbits the moon's dark side.
Jones uses flashbacks to give us crucial moments leading to
the moon shot and the crisis; the 1989 script is a witty,
well-crafted mixture of sci-fi, drama and suspense, with
plenty of humor to break the tension. "Darkside," though, is
as much a psychological study of three diverse temperaments as
it is an adventure tale of space exploration
On the surface, the crew - Capt. Bill Griffin (Jay Michael
Fraley), Capt. Ed Stone (Ryan Harris) and Commander Gerald
"Gunner" Smith (Vince Campbell) - display jocular confidence.
During flight simulations, though, Bill has helped calm the
panic-stricken Ed, while trying to allay his own fears
regarding the mission (waiting for liftoff, he says, is like
sitting atop "a 36-story stick of dynamite") and the prospect
of orbiting the moon, alone, for days at a time.
A scene on the beach, weeks before the launch, contrasts the
exhilaration Gunner feels about moon missions ("It's like
Genesis and Armageddon all rolled into one!") and first-timers
Bill and Ed's trepidation. Bill and Gunner belatedly realize
that Ed could crack at any minute, and therein lies much of
the script's suspense.
Harris credibly mixes Ed's vulnerability - the mounting terror
and panic just below the surface - and the phony calm front he
puts up. Campbell nails Gunner's toughness and cool
professionalism. Nothing rattles this guy, who regards poking
around on the moon as all in a day's work - yet he hasn't lost
his awe of the infinite beauty of space.
Bill's skin is dangerously thin, and Fraley invests him with a
burning resentment at being perceived by outsiders as "safe"
from danger for never having to leave the ship. Fraley shows
how Bill's easygoing swagger is a facade for his ambivalence
and his suffocating sense of guilt once his friends become
stranded.
Jami McCoy and Coreen Milstein Mueller are the lonely,
neglected wives. As Ed's wife, Gigi, McCoy has the more
complex role, drinking heavily, flirting with Bill - anything
to get Ed's attention. Mueller's Beth is at first depicted as
the supportive, dutiful wife to Bill. Like Gigi, though, she
feels shut out. The characters may seem cliché-ridden, but
they must ring true to any woman whose husband was ever
married to his career.
Jonathon P. Markanday is a quietly competent head of mission
control, and Larry F. Scott is credibly pushy as a reporter
who goads the crew at every turn, intent upon finding a chink
in the mission's armor.
Case's staging divides the black-box set into separate areas,
and her soundtrack is enjoyably rife with moon-themed pop
tunes such as "Blue Moon" and "Bad Moon Rising." The backdrop
is Fraley's set, a gray-white moon painted against all-black
wall and floor, while Larry Evans' technical advisement and
Heather Enriquez's costumes - flight suits for the astronauts,
gauzy gowns and '60s 'dos for the women - provide a level of
authenticity.


"Darkside" is highlight of Guerrilla?s season

By ANNE-MARGRET BELLAVOINE
FOR THE STAR-PROGRESS


NASA's Apollo lunar exploration program ended in 1972 with its final, 17th mission. Thus Ken Jones' 18th mission is a fictional narrative. Jones' compellingly stark drama, directed by Sharyn Case, documents this final voyage, starting with two astronauts stranded on the Moon, Vince Campbell as Commander ?Gunner? Smith and Ryan Harris as Pilot Ed Smith. The two are attempting to lift off from the lunar surface again, with pressure problems preventing the operation. Meanwhile, Captain Bill Griffin (Jay Michael Fraley) is circling alone in the space ship above, leaving and entering the dark side with each rotation. Houston, personified by Jonathon P. Markanday as Cap-Com, is providing reassuring advice and data analysis from Houston through space communication.
The story is told through a series of flashbacks during the time preceding the launch, with the three astronauts training and living their lives while waiting for their approaching historical moment. If Gunner's character is surprisingly left unexplored, the one minor weakness in an otherwise near flawless drama, the other two men?s personae are defined through their wives, solidly rooted Beth (Coreen Milstein Mueller) and out of control Gigi (Jami McCpy). While Beth is Bill?s anchor, providing smooth serenity through the vagaries of life as an astronaut?s wife, Gigi cavalierly ignores Ed while relentlessly pursuing Bill.
Jay Michael Fraley's austere moon painting provides an eerie backdrop for the [unfolding] drama, with a few black boxes and tables providing the suggestion of the various other locales, from space capsules to bed and bar rooms. Nerves and resolves erode when oxygen and time begin their ultimate countdown to disaster, and flawed humanity regains its survival urges at odds with the hero and glory worship of astronauts viewed as modern gods. This compact play, humorous as it explores the frontiers of mind and space, is a highlight of the local season. The current Space Shuttle missions' revival, whose issues mirror Apollo's, makes it a must-see.
THEATER Vol. 10 No. 50 August 19 - 25, 2005
Rickety Rocket
Ken Jones' tense Darkside aims for the moon,
gets stuck on Earth
by JOEL BEERS

Space exploration and theater don?t have the most
intimate of histories?and not just because we?ve
been sending humans into space for 50 years and
onto stages for 3,000. The canvas for space
exploration is nothing less than the universe; a
theater set is rarely bigger than your living
room.

Ken Jones' 1987 play Darkside is one of the rare
theatrical forays into the final frontier. At its
best moments, this Rude Guerrilla production shows
that theater's greatest asset - the power to prod
the imagination and convey dramatic emotion
through words rather than visual stimuli - can work
even when it comes to space travel. The play
vividly captures the intense tension and
loneliness of two men trapped on the surface of
the moon while their fellow astronaut, helplessly
orbiting around them, desperately waits for a
successful lunar launch that will unite them with
his module so they can successfully return to
Earth.
On that level, the play and production work. And
if Jones had focused on merely our three
astronauts-in-crisis, Darkside could be a great
play. But apparently feeling he didn?t have enough
to work with, he hamstrings the soaring action and
frequently eloquent poetics of his play with soap
opera histrionics, told through a series of
flashbacks intercut with the rapidly failing
mission. The cheap infidelities, domestic
squabbles, black-hatted journalists and
implausible circumstances?such as a space program
that apparently doesn?t conduct rigorous enough
psychological examinations to realize that one
astronaut is prone to critical-mass emotional
breakdowns?can sometimes make Darkside feel like
Dallas dry-humping Apollo 13. The result is an
ungainly, unsatisfying construct that makes you
wish Jones had hit the delete key on every scene
not set in space.
Still, Darkside ultimately delivers, thanks to
some stellar acting by Jay Fraley, Ryan Harris
and, particularly, Vince Campbell, who gets the
most defined character and the best lines. When
Campbell explains that space exploration is valid
and important because it's the logical progression
of humanity's inherent drive to redefine itself
through movement, you might not agree with the
politics - can't it also be seen as humanity's
inherent drive to dominate and subjugate
everything within its grasp? - but you feel the
passion. Likewise with his articulation of what
everyone who's ever seen this planet from outer
space must surely feel: that heaven and earth have
reversed themselves. It's like looking into God's
face, he says, in a moving blend of science and
poetry that skirts the eschatological and recalls
the psychedelic hues of Robert Hunter's lines in
the Grateful Dead's "Eyes of the World."
The greater consciousness and awareness that
exploring space affords are in constant conflict
with the passions, pettiness and other flaws of
the characters in Darkside. Had Jones been able to
express them without resorting to ham-fisted,
melodramatic, all-too-terrestrial dialogue, or had
this production been able to deliver them more
subtly, this play could be riveting rather than
rickety.