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In space no one can hear you scream, but at Third Rail Repertory Theatre’s production of X by Alistar McDowall, your fellow audience members might.
Directed by company member Rebecca Lingafelter, X has nothing to do with the social media network or its billionaire owner’s space program, but it is scary. The influences on both the playwright and the production include 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien—or more prominently, Aliens. While there’s no xenomorph hunting the crew, it seems, like many millennials, McDowall was deeply traumatized by The Ring, namely the cursed, long-haired little girl. The combination of the twists on our collective cultural reference points and the unnerving way the play unfolds make for a fascinating trip through space and time, one that morphs into a meditation on truth and memory.
The crew are stranded on Pluto, away from an Earth so destroyed there are no more trees. Being trapped in space would make anyone go bonkers; these characters are no exception, but they’re not falling down the rabbit hole alone—they’re taking the audience with them. A scene in Act 2 will test your sanity, but if you can make it through to the finale, you’re in for a wild ride that will make you question not only the reality of the events in the play, but reality itself. The passage of time at first seems linear, yet it’s not. It’s worth noting the content warnings posted regarding the play: there will be blood. And puke. And terror.
The ensemble cast, lead by company member and managing artistic director Maureen Porter, shows fear and madness with subtlety, which makes it hard to tell if the characters are, in fact, going nuts, and, if so, which ones? Mike O’Connell quips and bounces his way through the first act, which makes his turn as an empathetic partner in the end all the more potent. Rounding out the cast are Bruce Burkhartsmeier as the haunted captain, Olivia Mathews as the young crew member who questions everything and Austin Michael Young, the one who seems so together until he completely falls apart. Rose (Rosie) and Fiona Kashinsky trade off playing the chilling child that crawls across the stage and—warning—into the audience.
The fear factor is enhanced by the technical elements and directorial choices. Sound design by Mark Valadez includes loud, mechanical whirrs and grinds, monotonous beeping and long stretches of silence. The silence is the most perturbing. Lighting by Carl Faber hits us with flashes and strobes which disorient the audience along with the characters. Characters appear from and disappear into shadows, reappearing from new locations like spectors, sometimes producing ghostly halos of illumination from their neck flashlights. Darkness is used to great effect. Costumes by Jenny Amersand echo their film references—the female lead ends the show in a grubby ribbed tank top like Alien’s Ripley.
While many projection designs do nothing to enhance the storytelling and, in fact, serve to eliminate practical effects and set pieces, X’s projections, designed by Trevor Sargent, are particularly well done. Visions appear sometimes as shadows and sometimes as fully-colorized phantasms, ghosts of the characters who go through the repetitive motions of life while the actors themselves move through the space. Sometimes the projected dopplegangers taunt the characters and the audience with a creepy doubling effect that perfectly matches the text and tone. Sometimes you wonder if the characters are hallucinating or if you are.
Like every set by Alex Meyer, X’s seems to be daring us to sneak on stage and wander around like the dazed characters do. If only we could look through the crew’s scribblings or poke around in the ominous cabinets. What might we find if we climbed the ladder? The single window doesn’t show a Plutonian desert or a view of the stars. It is black and, when characters approach, we brace for a jump scare. During intermission, the cast comes and goes as projections of them play on the backdrop, placing seemingly random objects around the stage and moving furniture, sometimes illogically. A game of Guess Who comes back to haunt us in the second act.
At times, the audience was so still it was hard to believe any of us were breathing. Other moments, chairs squeaked uncomfortably, especially as insanity began to set in. Solving for X in this play is a mind-bending puzzle. “X” can mean myriad things throughout the play: a variable, a scar, time itself, a kiss. While the story is purposefully disorienting, it does not lack emotional depth. It will make you question your own relationships and your own relationship with yourself.
SEE IT: X at Third Rail Repertory Theatre. 2257 NW Raleigh St., https://thirdrailrep.org/ 7:30 pm, Thursdays-Saturdays May 22-June 7, 2026, 2:00 pm Sundays, 7:30 pm Wednesday, June 3. $31.50-$100.
