Heinz Hermann Koelle (Laura Boston Edwards, front left) and Arthur Rudolph (Suzanne Roush, front right) react to something offstage while William A. Mrazek (Imani Joseph, rear left) and Helmut Hoelzer (Vallea E. Woodbury, rear right) are hard at work. (All photos by Casey Gardner Ford)
“How the rockets were built matters” is both thesis and rallying cry in Crystal Skillman’s The Rocket Men, a new play kicking off its rolling world premiere at Synchronicity Theatre through November 2. This story of complicity, denial and historical revision challenges the foundations of one of our nation’s greatest scientific achievements while asking what horrors we are willing to overlook in the name of progress.
The Rocket Men investigates the history of Operation Paperclip, a program initiated by the U.S. government in the wake of World War II, in which a team of German scientists who had collaborated with the Nazi party were brought over to work on American rockets, eventually becoming responsible for the mission that put the first man on the moon.
Imani Joseph, left, and Gillian Rabin.
Skillman makes the choice to center the narrative on the relationship between Wernher von Braun (Amelia Fischer), the leader of the team, and new recruit Heinz-Hermann Koelle (Laura Boston Edwards). What starts as a mentor-mentee dynamic becomes fraught as Koelle, the only member of the team willing to acknowledge the horrors their country committed, learns more about von Braun’s involvement with the Nazis.
The playwright also chose for the exclusively male characters to be played by an all-female cast. While this decision may feel distracting for a portion of the show, Skillman carefully conceals her hand until the last minute, at which point the purpose of this device becomes devastatingly clear.
The Rocket Men is the type of play that one appreciates more so during reflection than during the actual viewing experience. The play is slow, dry and at times too cerebral. Its message — that progress cannot occur without first reckoning with the past — is clear from the outset, but it drags its feet reaching any kind of conclusion.
However, once that conclusion is reached, the dramatic, emotional impact is so compelling that it nearly smooths out any bumps in the road. Skillman has managed a finale so powerful that it is worth the price of admission on its own.
How are the rockets built? What ugly chapters of our history do we gloss over simply because the result is that we get to go to the moon? The script intelligently grapples with this question, asking whether the brighter future that von Braun waxes poetic about is even possible without accountability for the sins he and the other Nazi collaborators committed.
This production’s message is conveyed with the help of a truly top-notch cast. Fischer nails the kind of self-important charisma that allows von Braun to move through the world without acknowledging his crimes, while Edwards does a great job of grounding us in the story.
The central powerhouse of the story, however, is Gillian Rabin as Sol Weissman, an American Jewish engineer who joins NASA and strikes up a friendship with Koelle. The other performers embody their roles well, but it is Fischer, Edwards and Rabin who make up the emotional core of the narrative.
Left to right: Amelia Fischer, Suzanne Roush, Imani Joseph and Vallea E. Woodbury in Synchronicity Theatre’s staging of The Rocket Men. (All photos by Casey Gardner Ford)
Director Rachel May does good work building up the camaraderie among these men, making us believe in their passion for their mission. One thing that is missing, however, is a sense of time passing — as the story spans multiple decades, it is often hard for the audience to situate itself within the play’s timeline.
May works in concert with scenic designer Gabby Stephenson Trice, lighting designer Elisabeth Cooper and projections designer Benton Reed to imbue the production with a heightened meta-theatricality, creating a Brechtian sense of detachment which sets the stage for the finale’s revelation.
There are some flaws that are hard to overlook. The intermittent attempts at humor are only sometimes successful, which does not help the perception that the play is overly dry. Still, at the center of the story is a message all too relevant: that everything, no matter how fantastical or how personal, is political, and no choice can ever be completely divorced from the context of the society that informs them.
The Rocket Men asks us, when looking at our own history, to question who has the right to tell our nation’s stories — the benefactors of our nation’s choices, the survivors or the victims?
Where & When
The Rocket Men is at Synchronicity Theatre through November 2. Tickets range from $10 to $45.
1545 Peachtree St. NE., Ste. 102
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Luke Evans is an Atlanta-based writer, critic and dramaturg. He covers theater for ArtsATL and Broadway World Atlanta and has worked with theaters such as the Alliance, Actor’s Express, Out Front Theatre and Woodstock Arts. He’s a graduate of Oglethorpe University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree, and the University of Houston, where he earned his master’s.
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