Two self-confessed slackers sit outside a café, their seemingly aimless chat occasionally interrupted by a boy who brings news of an absent boss. Sound familiar? There’s more than a bit of Waiting For Godot to Annie Baker’s Aliens, though the setting (Vermont) is more grounded and the drop-out characters and their sparky and sparked-up banter more familiar. And whilst Aliens contains some moments of delicate magic, which confirm all three boys’ innate desire to really take part in life (despite their cynicism concerning middle America and their middling lives), this is much a lighter and less bleakly focused piece than Beckett’s inimitable play.

The tone is certainly similar to that peculiar mix found in Beckett’s work, with crass humour and deeply moving moments nestling awkwardly (but realistically) side by side. Ralf Little’s character, KJ (a dreadlocked hippy with a beatific smile), embodies the easy humour of Baker’s play. He is the chief druggy of the group and spends much time splayed on the floor, eyes and thoughts turned to the heavens. When his best friend, Jasper (Mackenzie Crook), reads him an extract from his never ending novel, KJ marvels: ‘Mate, your novel’s giving me a bit of a boner.’ The spectre of Vladimir and Estragon is never far off with these silly but rich exchanges, which are often sad and empty, too. 

Little and Crook (who looks like he’s on the comedown of a lifetime) find an elegant and believable rhythm together, never straining too hard for the profundities beneath the philosophizing. Both are consummate comic performers and they take their time over their punch lines, trusting in the quirks their characters possess. Crook is a particularly fearless actor: his stage creations are always unpredictable, as odd and angular as his curiously sharp features. At one point, Crook delays a sing song by eating a brownie ever so slowly, the audience transfixed by each mouthful. It might sound like a nothing moment but it says a lot about the duo’s power dynamic, their priorities and the pace at which they take life.

Crook also holds all the weight of this play: his eyes are hardened with a deep lodged despair and deadened by hours of staring out a blank window at an empty landscape. His heavy presence is fortunate and necessary because, although Little is a likeable and assured performer, his mushroomed musings come close to sounding clichéd.

Yet, despite Crook invoking a certain dread with his drowning sighs and darting eyes, it is only when the two make a new friend – young Evan, working at the café on his summer break – that the play stops floating and starts to settle. Crook’s transformation at the arrival of fresh meat – a new vessel to absorb and admire his ‘genius’ – is marked and moving. Crook’s eyes sparkle suddenly, his voice lifts and the profound boredom and loneliness of these two lost souls begins to find its way into the audience.

The loneliness of these two forgotten outsiders is emphasised by their reaction to Evan and his responses. Evan (a painfully young but mature Olly Alexander) is so nervous, his fingers constantly twiddling with his apron, that the most he can muster in reply to his new heroes’ boasts is a simple ‘cool’. Over and over again. That this reply is more than enough for Crook’s ‘living piece of trailer trash’ is revealing and sad. We get the impression that, although KJ and Jasper spend their days outside the main action, shunning the status quo, what they really want is to be let inside.
This idea is neatly reinforced at the end of Act 1 when the motley crew, shunning the Independence Day celebrations, leap around in an attempt to see an off-stage fireworks display. That the boy brings them sparklers is ever so slightly trite, but it is a neat scene, showing two men who have backed themselves into a corner, far away from the magic or happiness that seems to exist elsewhere.

Writer Baker maintains a fine line between flippant chat and obliquely meaningful moments in this first act, but the balance slips in the second half. Act 2 is more serious – the comedown following the trippy Act 1 – but, with Mackenzie Crook absent, the play wriggles out of director Peter Gill’s grasp; maybe there’s not much to hold onto. Gill could have pushed for a harder and edgier first half - but, instead, Ralf Little’s character is played for laughs and Alexander’s Evan for indulgent smiles. Crook is really this show’s soul and without him it feels lightweight and unanchored.

Still, it is touching to watch Evan mature and frightening when we realise that it is tragedy, more often than not, that forces us to grow up. This relationship between Evan and his layabout friends is what Baker writes best; Evan’s ache for approval, the men’s melting toward him and the shift in power as Evan grows up. Perhaps if Walker had focused more on these relationships – and spent slightly less time trying to reach abstract Beckettian heights beyond her reach - this play might have transformed from an entertaining show with the occasional sparkle, to a full on theatrical firework display.

Till 16 October 2010