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.