Mercury Poisoning (KXT on Broadway) ★★★1/2

Written by Madeleine Stedman. World Premiere. KXT on Broadway. 15-30 Mar, 2024.

You can’t accuse Madeleine Stedman’s Mercury Poisoning of lacking ambition. Its terrific cast of twelve play dozens of roles across three separate storylines, reciting the beautiful language she has written, over the almost three hour running time. I applaud a writer who refuses to limit themselves to the awkward practicalities of the independent stage.

Set in a semi-fictionalised 60s, we follow three women on different paths to space. Molly (Teodora Matovic) is an American pilot who wants to be the first woman in orbit. Valeria (Violette Ayad) is a Russian worker who is selected to be a cosmonaut. Nicole (Shawnee Jones) is an African-American actress who finds herself on a science-fiction TV show. The three of them face different barriers to achieve their dreams.

My first impression of Mercury Poisoning was formed by seeing the luminous, minimalist production design by Meg Anderson that instantly reminded me of the film Nope. The pulsing, breathing, parachute canopy reminded me of the alien from Jordan Peele’s film. It also captures Jimi Rawlings’ lighting well, washing the stage with colour. They are complimented by Rowan Yeomans and Jay Rae’s sound design that hums beneath the scenes.

The ensemble does a good job of jumping between roles aided by multiple fast costume changes. It’s hard to pick highlights across this strong pack of actors, but the lead trio of Matovic, Ayad and Jones hold their storylines together with nuance. The ensemble are remarkably good at keeping each new character clear and precise, but it’s here that the impracticality of the script starts to cause friction. Did the story need THIS many characters, THIS many locations?

A succession of short scenes starts to make this feel like it is less a piece of theatre, and more of a spec-script to pitch an Apple TV+ series (ala For All Mankind Season One). A more elegant, poetic way of navigating the material would elevate it, whereas the linear cross-cutting between scenes and storylines feels like a piece of edited film presented live.

With an exhaustive running time and no set changes, the script fails to justify its luxurious pacing. The three narratives don’t manage to play off each other. Molly, Valeria and Nicole each face different problems so there is no commonality of message here. Yes, there are varying degrees of sexism to fight, but Nicole’s is predominantly a story of racism and Valeria’s more about tokenism. I can see interesting connections between Molly and Valeria (USA v Russia), and between Molly and Nicole (reality vs fiction) but the link between all three is abstract at best.

Mercury Poisoning is full of good performances and some wonderful lines that are getting a bit lost in the “uncanny valley” of independent theatre. It’s too big for the small scale and needs to either trim down to the space, or be staged with the spectacle and scope worthy of its ambition. Personally I’d like to see the latter.