Galatea

Or: Machines of Loving Grace

In the far future, on a space station above the earth Dr. Margaret Mailer (Jen Stockwell-Fortner) has a mystery to solve. The salvage operation, led by her colleague, irrepressible Dr. Hughes (Darin Vickery) has found a cryogenically frozen survivor of a decades old mishap. Seventy-One (Sasha Allen-Grieve) claimed to have been a service robot on the Galatea, a colony ship who disappeared nearly a hundred years before hand. But Dr. Mailer, a psychiatrist who specializes with synthetic consciousness, is convinced Seventy-One is hiding more secrets, about the death of the Galetea and herself.

I do love a mystery play, and David Templeton’s science fiction play is a neatly sculpted, gut wrenching ride. Though perhaps over-freighted with scene setting (as such plays tend by nature to be) and willing to walk where it could sprint, Galatea sets itself up nicely for explorations of what humanity is. Allen-Grieve perfectly captures the cool, humorous smoothness of an artificial being, well matched against Stockwell-Fortner’s folksy, almost sinister, gentleness and compassion.

As the facts come to light, hastened by arrival of the Castway (a somber and pointed Chris Canfield) another unlikely survivor, Seventy-One’s history disintegrates around her. Allen-Grieve flakes through the malfunctioning memory with heart breaking delivery, and the fine nimbus of greater secrets. piece by piece, the performance, and the play itself, construct a moving, breath taking piece of art, that saddens and comforts. In space, after all, no one can hear your weep.