The Cosmonaut's Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union

Synopsis

The Cold War is over, but Oleg and Casimir who have been lost in space for several years, don't know. Meanwhile, down on earth, from Edinburgh to London to Oslo and Provence, the lives of an erotic dancer, a civil servant, a speech therapist, a UFO researcher, a World Bank official and a policewoman interweave as they try to make sense of love, life and the universe.

Our Review:

13 April 2005

Titles don’t come much stranger (or longer) than The Cosmonaut's Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved In the Former Soviet Union, but then plays don’t come much weirder (or occasionally perplexing) than the elliptical, frequently cryptic one that this title embraces.

The Donmar Warehouse’s artistic director Michael Grandage scored one of his most distinctive early hits in 2003, soon after he took over the running of the theatre, by staging David Greig’s compelling version of Camus’ Caligula. He now repays the debt by offering a home to Tim Supple’s broodingly textured revival of Greig’s own, sometimes fascinating but deliberately fractured, play that was first staged by Vicky Featherstone for Paines Plough in 1999 (the same team coincidentally behind Pyrenees, Greig’s new play that is currently at the Menier Chocolate Factory).

But Greig’s play has a large debt of its own: as it journeys ...

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Latest User Review

81.134.196.124) - 3 May 2005:

I have decided that David Grieg's obtuse plays really aren't my cup of tea. I found this one very irritating and, at 2.5 hours, frankly boring....

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