red dirt / red storm, Second Star on the Right at Edmonton Fringe 2025. Graphic supplied.
red dirt / red storm (Stage 8, Old Strathcona Performing Arts Centre)
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
The premise of this two-hander from the Los Angeles company Second Star on the Right is not without promise. It locates a warring couple, S and Clark, on Mars. And a major source of friction in their relationship is whether to keep moving through the universe and relocate, to Jupiter perhaps, or to stay put on Mars and grow stuff for the burgeoning Martian population.
Nothing about this set-up, however unusual an application of the upward mobility principle, will prepare you for 60 minutes in the dreary company of S (Ashley Victoria Robinson) and Clark (Zach Counsil). In a very long series of short repetitive scenes separated by blackouts, exits, yoga moves, and repetitions of the same on-hold-type musical riffs, S and Clark chatter at each other at top speed and volume, bickering repeatedly about their respective careers and ambitions, until you’re entitled to wonder if you might have slipped into a black hole in the space-time continuum.
They met, in the Mars company founded, I think, by S’s parents (she was evidently the first baby born on the red planet, to space explorer parents). S’s job is the corporate communications person; she’s charged with interviewing Clark, a prospective employee in the engineering department. And judging by their encounters, designed to be flirtatious and reveal the chemistry that will propel them into a relationship, there is a reason why more dramas (and also romantic comedies, farces, and musicals) aren’t set in human resources departments.
Soon S and Clark are sleeping together, then living together, then shouting at each other about moving, about things like whether Clark’s ambitions for rocket travel put him and others in danger (“progress is dangerous”), about marriage (S rejects it as an Earth relic, unsuitable for the new post-Earthly age). The actors drill the dialogue at each other in staccato bursts that wear you down, as an innocent bystander. It is S, I believe, who says “discovering shit is easy” and “building is hard.” And this wisdom would apply to theatre, too.
Anyhow, you certainly hope that S and Chris bail on the idea of re-locating to Jupiter, since a year there equals 12 on earth. Sixty minutes is more than enough.
