Skip to main content
Kiss of death by video
Uniformity of ‘talking heads’ presentation annihilates all possibility of conveying the true drama inherent in the play, suggests GORDON PARSONS
L to R) Toy Soldierand Zaporozhian (Cossack)

Planet Speranta
Finborough Theatre Online

 

FINBOROUGH Theatre’s Frontier has unearthed this 1965 work by a leading Soviet-Ukrainian playwright, Oleksii Kolomiiets, for its Voices From Ukraine programme of YouTube plays and interviews.

Planet Speranta (Hope) has five WWII Soviet soldiers holed up in a Ukrainian bunker surrounded by German troops.

One by one they are anonymously ordered out, presumably on a desperate attempt to report to their base while those left discuss life, love, fear and death.

Significantly, they are, as one questions, a “detachment” on a reconnaissance mission with orders not to become acquainted with each other. They are nameless, referring to one another by generalised soubriquets — Whiskers, Moustache, Toy Soldier, Intellectual and Zaporozhian (Cossack).

As tension builds, mutual irritation gives way to bonding as they struggle to make sense of a life-threatening situation they hardly understand.

They exchange stories from their home lives — a smuggled family photograph, lost and found loves, above all, hopes for a bright future, even if not for themselves.

Their folded greatcoats are symbolically folded and left behind as each one puts on the white camouflage coat to exit into what we imagine is a waste snowscape and virtually certain death.

An initial apology for the shortcomings of the Zoom recording leaves a determined cast, apparently working from different geographical locations, struggling with admittedly a “play reading.” A narrator fills in with stage directions, lighting and sound and what seem unnecessary subtitles are occasionally muddled.

What bedevils the potential effect of an interesting dramatic rediscovery, however, is the talking heads presentation. On the small screen this technique works well with a single monologue but the process of flitting from character to character loses tension.

Morning Star Conference - Race, Sex & Class
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
wasteland
Books / 16 May 2025
16 May 2025

GORDON PARSONS steps warily through the pessimistic world view of an influential US conservative

nazi nightmares
Books / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a unique dream journal collected by a Jewish journalist in Nazi Berlin

titus
Theatre review / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

GORDON PARSONS meditates on the appetite of contemporary audiences for the obscene cruelty of Shakespeare’s Roman nightmare

Pier Paolo Pasolini as Chaucer in his film of The Canterbury
Books / 16 October 2024
16 October 2024
GORDON PARSONS recommends an ideal introduction to the writer who was first to give the English a literary language
Similar stories
TB
Music / 12 May 2025
12 May 2025

A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens 

CANNY EYE: Photographer Martin Parr
Cinema / 20 February 2025
20 February 2025
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews I Am Martin Parr, September Says, The Monkey, and The Gorge
(L) Nightbitch; (R) Porcelain War
Cinema / 5 December 2024
5 December 2024
Horror for young mothers and Western presidents, a one-legged wrestler and weaponised art; the Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Nightbitch, Rumours, Unstoppable and Porcelain War
Album reviews / 9 September 2024
9 September 2024
New releases from David Grubb, Bright Eyes and Trygve Seim, Frode Haltli