A piece of advice: if you're feeling a bit hormonal, it's probably best not to go and read the undelivered Nixon moon speech. The one written just in case the moon landings, well... didn't land. Never have so many devastating phrases been packed into so few words. It's eight short paragraphs of pure, medical-grade, emotional manipulation. The bureaucratic equivalent of eight Andrex puppies pathetically struggling to untangle themselves from a metres of soft loo roll. To make it even worse, the speech is topped by a few housekeeping instructions that are devastating in their simplicity. I have to admit that this blogger lost it entirely at the phrase "widows-to-be."
Thankfully I managed to clean off the mascara tracks off my cheeks before heading over to the Vaults to catch Barry McStay's new play, The First. Taking the speech-that-never-was as his inspiration, we are launched right into the ship of the first manned trip to Mars.
Katrina Allen and Daniel Ward are at the helm, wafting along the slim stage to a soundtrack of spacey beeps and boops from Tingying Dong.
Replicating the look of zero gravity while in an underground tunnel is a tough order. And by rights balancing over a table should make Allen's astronaut Rose look ridiculous, but the movement, created by Mikley Brett, is as restrained as it is ingenious and the sight of the two crew members floating invisible props to each other through the dank air gets a giggle of appreciation from the audience.
The bants however, are flying a good deal faster.
This pair have been living in close quarters just a touch too long. The bonhomie of coworkers worn thin without the option of weekends off. There's a serrated edge forming between then as they try to one-up one another on who can come up with the best words to accompany their first steps on an alien planet.
The thought of what they'll be thinking down on earth is never far from their minds, even if the answers takes a 50-minute delay to get to them.
Turns out, the words to accompany their landing are very much on the minds of those on earth. In a well-guarded room two writers are busy scribbling out the twin speeches. One to be delivered when the astronauts safely arrive on Mars, and the other destined to become nothing more than a viral curio.
Switching into these new characters, and new accents, Allen and Ward demonstrate so neatly how damned difficult good words are, even when the inspirational is near heavenly.
Ward's Marcus glares at his laptop, as if wanting to frighten the words into existence, while Allen's Alisha frantically riffles through the pages of her notebook. Above their heads is the glowing planet, designed by Delyth Evans, clinging almost limpet-like on the wall. A constant reminder of their mission.
There's so much fast wordplay and clever-put downs both on the ground and up in space I'm beginning to fear for the future of the capital-S capital-R Special Relationship. This future American president, reportedly worse than Trump, may be happy to send up one of his girls with only a Brit to keep her company, but if the look on Marcus' face as Alisha tries to feed him various Brit-delicacies is anything to go by, I suspect we may be heading for a messy divorce.
Proving that even in this search for everlasting fame, when any cost is worth buying legacy that will outlive us, nothing lasts forever. Not even for those who make it into the history books. A fact that is never truer than down in the Vaults.
As we approach the end of our 60-minute slot, words and acting and movement and story are pumping out over me at such a rate that I have to poke a finger up underneath my glasses to stop a tear before it manages to do any more damage to my mascara.
Christ. I mean, not to blaspheme or anything, but seriously. My heart feels like a damp dishcloth, wrung out and now shivering gently on the line. My plans for a paracetamol and a cosy night in with my electric blanket are soon swapped out for a strong gin and tonic and an emergency compilation of kitten videos.
One thing's for sure, I don't have the stomach for immortality. I’ll happily wait for second place.
The First was performed at VAULT Festival between 11 - 16 February 2020