The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union
In his odd, powerful The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union, Scottish playwright David Greig posits a similar dissonance in the human heart and mind. His primary example is a pair of Soviet cosmonauts who have been orbiting the earth for 12 years. Long since out of communication with the ground, Oleg and Casimir don’t know that the USSR has been dissolved, much less what’s become of anybody they loved there. All they have is their extinct images. At one point Oleg comforts Casimir by summoning a vision of Casimir’s daughter swimming in the cool waters of Lake Baikal and looking up at him as his capsule passes overhead each day–never mind that in fact Baikal is now a toxic puddle and the daughter, Nastasja, is working as an exotic dancer in London.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Dev Kennedy’s Keith is another marvelous paradox: a banal, fatuous, cowardly man who can be awfully bad but also compellingly lost. Kennedy’s Bernard not only looks a lot like Chuck Close but carries himself with an inquisitive, compassionate dignity consistent with what I’ve read about that great artist. Sandra Delgado is an unexpectedly charming combination of vulgarity and hunger as Nastasja, especially when she makes an effort to convince herself that Eric is the Hollywood mogul who’s finally come to take her away from all this. Rita Simon moves nicely from mousy, hankering Vivienne to someone much harder and denser, a stripper named Sylvia. And Scott Kennedy’s whacked-out Casimir and Jamie Vann’s stolid, lethal Oleg are hilarious as they wait for Godot in outer space.
