Space is the Place: The Moon is a Dead World @ Annex Theatre

While Seattlest is a sucker for anything space-related and a Mike Daisey fanboy, there wasn't a lot in this play to identify it as a Mike Daisey work. It's his first play, but he does have a pretty well-developed stage voice, as you might imagine, him being a well-established monologist and all. A character on stage in a work of fiction delivering a speech to the audience and a Daisey live event are two very different breeds of monologue, of course, but it just seemed like the humor, anger, and chains of logic, humor, and anger that are so prevalent in his solo work were absent. Instead, the audience is presented with a wind-up toy plot that is configured a certain way at the beginning of the play and ticks down to a certain conclusion by the end, logically, mechanically, without emotion, and kind of anticlimactically. Which seems to be what he was going for. Mission accomplished.

The American characters Nimitz and Cal, played by Jack Hamblin and Clayton Weller, were funny and diligent and very American. When confronted by a confusing situation, what do they do? Torture. Cut off a finger. One of Seattlest's favorite Cold War movies, Spies Like Us, attributes that activity to the Russians ("Mine or yours?"), but maybe in 2008, the roles are reversed and we're now the digit removers? Pamala Mijatov as the golem Irina injected what she could into a character that is intended to be cold and loveless and Zachariah Robinson absolutely nailed one side of the character Gregor.

That American astronaut who strapped on a space diaper and drove cross-country non-stop to stalk a reluctant lover? Robinson nailed the side of Gregor who takes that scenario a giant leap further by following his jilter into space and then beyond death itself, but doesn't do as well as God Gregor the All-Powerful where perhaps a more stoic and weighty Russian might have fared better. To use an extremely contemporary example, the bad guy from the new Christian Slater TV show who was blown up in the desert in the first episode is a very fine Russian, and would make a great Gregor, although, admittedly, that guy might not exist in the casting pool available to the Annex Theatre.

The set, by the way, had us drooling for a closer look at that old radio equipment, and people applauded mid-play for the big Snow Event. Speaking of audience participation: On Friday night during Gregor's opening monologue, which is great, a woman stepped on the best line in it by running right in front of the actor to get to her seat after the performance had started. Don't do that. Duh.

Although it was fun and interesting, the gears of The Moon is a Dead World ran a little too smoothly for our tastes; we were hoping for more evidence of Mike Daisey, but, hey, it's a new play! If a new play of this caliber opened in Seattle every few weeks, we could stop going to see Hollywood crap or caring about how Christian Slater blows up Russians on the TV.

Pamala Mijatov as Irina and Zachariah Robinson as Gregor in "The Moon Is A Dead World" by Mike Daisey at Annex Theatre.