The Telescope at SiLo Theatre

Reviewed by NIGEL GEARING

Martyn Roberts is passionate about astronomy. In Roberts' new play, The Telescope, Peter Rutherford plays an agoraphobic astronomer on the verge of discovering a dying star. He uses the occasion to invite the object of his secret desire to his house.

Those familiar with Roberts' previous work will know the writer, director and lighting technician's style of slowly letting the story unfold. In his first work, the 2001 Bats Theatre production, Man On The Moon, Wellington actors Lloyd Scott and Jason Whyte played the same character, 30 years apart.

Both missed the Apollo moon landings because of apathy. In that 40-minute play no words were spoken - instead, sound and light told the story.

"I used two of the best actors in Wellington and they didn't say anything," says Roberts, also based in the capital.

The Telescope is an hour and a-quarter long. Rutherford says nothing for the first half hour.

Instead, lighting directed by Roberts and live music performed by Steve Gallagher and Sebastian Morgan-Lynch are used to get the audience inside the head of the lead character.

"That way the audience can access his mind without him having to speak," Roberts says. "While it's physical theatre in one sense, it's hypernaturalism in another. He can spend a minute and a half sharpening a pencil but the audience has to let events unfold as if they were watching a dance piece."

Rutherford does get two pieces of dialogue in a play that is deliberately retro, but much is left shrouded in mystery. Lloyd Scott is the space-obsessed radio ham who, via the wireless, gives away some important snippets that may help the audience to understand what is going on outside our astronomer's house.

These snippets are key to events that take place on the evening the astronomer is waiting for Helen (Miranda Manasiadis) to arrive.

"You don't know what will happen and you don't always have to," Roberts says. "People come up to me after the show and tell me what happened. They like to have control over interpretation."

A bit like the astronomer he has invented.

"I've always been a huge space fan and fascinated with those people who hide themselves away from society in a curious way.

"This play is a way of incorporating both those ideas. An agoraphobic is someone who has to have a structured routine in order to maintain control in a hugely changing universe.

"The lead character is a Mr Bean kind of character the audience can empathise with. He is both a shy man and one who likes things to go his way.

"Peter and I had already created him before I invited the musicians to the rehearsals and they contributed their interpretation to his character."

The Carter Observatory in Wellington was also approached for help in crafting the main character.

"We did a lot of background work on the lead. The guys at the observatory were fascinating geeks.

"Astronomers love it when they receive a seemingly simple question. They then take hours to explain the answer."

Roberts says the short season in Auckland of five nights is the result of financial constraints. He hopes his target audience, those who would like Gus Van Sant's latest film Elephant and the movies of David Lynch, will spread the word so he can bring the work back to Auckland at a later stage.

His next project?

"It's called The Singularity and the title is based on the part in the black hole where you don't know what will happen next. It's a metaphor for events in a person's life."

* from today until Saturday, 8pm