With the miscellaneous problems going on on this planet, Alice (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) has joined a mission to Mars. There will be no coming back, but it is in the finality and banality of an attempt to cancel her phone contract via an automated voice recognition system that doesn’t seem to do its one job (that is, recognise voices) that practically forces her to take a moment to understand that it is very much a permanent goodbye if she proceeds. And yet she demands in a later scene why her sister Abigail (a delightful Meghan Treadway) has come to visit her: like the plot of a thousand plays or more, the siblings have not interacted for some years, but a crucial life event has led to a forced reunion of sorts.
Quite a subtle play, it verges on the impenetrable at times in terms of its dialogue. It was admirable in some respects to have portrayed the two sisters as people who palpably understood each other even without finishing the articulation of their thoughts out loud. But it left parts of the play more difficult to work out than was strictly necessary, a point compounded by, for instance, a video call in which only one side of the conversation could be heard, and at least one scene almost in total darkness.
The other onstage character is Will (Ben Allen), Alice’s ex-partner who, well, finds himself attracted to Abigail too, despite an initial denial, and the two sisters having almost polar opposite personalities. His is a rather underwritten role, even if he does provide some much-needed context to proceedings. The stagecraft is decent, with the set able to portray Alice’s front room just as convincingly as a space shuttle launch facility.
I couldn’t escape the feeling that this was an exploration of ‘first world problems’ – at a personal level, at least, there wasn’t, the one-way ticket to Mars aside, that much going on to provide the show with sufficient dramatic tension. And even going into space was a matter of personal choice rather than something forced on Alice.
The show’s title (still barely unpronounceable to your reviewer) was explained briefly in the play, though what precisely it is, beyond the dictionary definition, remained elusive. There was some talk about the ‘Fermi Paradox’ (look that up too at your leisure, or don’t) and the reasons why there remains no substantive evidence of life on Mars or any other planet aside from our own – yet. If that is the sort of thing that interests you, Alice knows a lot about it. If not, there’s Abigail, almost excruciatingly bored, resorting to mimicking her sister’s speech patterns in response.
A sudden outburst of emotion from Alice seemed out of place for someone rational and logical enough to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Overall, a story that was riveting in parts and lukewarm in others.
Review by Chris Omaweng
“Your sister’s problem was she got to see how big the universe was. But she thought that made all of us small.”
Sisters are strange – a collision of opposites and alignments, pulling and pushing away from each other. Alice and Abigail are no different. Alice got their mother’s looks; Abigail got her sense of humour. Alice has a Nobel Prize for Medicine; Abigail likes to get stoned on the sofa. Abigail is a homebody; Alice is preparing to leave the earth forever on a one-way mission to deep space.
When the sisters rediscover the joy of being in each other’s orbit, the concept of a goodbye becomes much harder than either of them anticipated. But the countdown has already started…
Will – Ben Allen
Alice – Dorothea Myer-Bennett
Abigail – Meghan Treadway
Writer – Alex Rugman
Director – Anna Ledwich
Designer – Tomás Palmer
Lighting Designer – Jonathan Chan
Sound Designer – Sarah Spencer
Movement & Intimacy Director – Rebecca Wield
THE URMETAZOAN
Hampstead Theatre
18 September to 24 October 2026
