Review: MARS redefines opera with out-of-this-world production at the Abbey Theatre

In 1950, Ray Bradbury penned The Martian Chronicles, the science fiction classic exploring the idea of settling on Mars, which directly inspired NASA's missions to the red planet. Following his 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke declared humans would populate Mars along with the Moon, and various exoplanets, by the year 2057. In the late 1990s, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy examined the settlement and terraforming of Mars. In 2011, Andy Weir's The Martian asked what happens when an astronaut is left on Mars, forced to make do with what little is there.

In 2025, composer Jennifer Walshe and librettist Mark O'Connell created MARS. If not the first time that martian travel took to opera, it was perhaps the first time seasons three through five of Real Housewives did. It was definitely the first time the words "ejaculate of God" were spoken on stage.

MARS is unlike anything the Irish National Opera has ever done. On a technical basis, it is beyond innovative.

The orchestra use live sparklers alongside historical synthesisers, with real NASA recordings — sounds of the Perseverance rover driving, the Orion spacecraft reentering the atmosphere, sonifications of magnetic field variations and stellar light waves, the mysterious Jovian whistlers, the first audio of sounds on Mars — woven in.

Screens above the stage show a mix of live feeds from cameras inside the spacecraft set, archival footage from past space programmes, clips from old sci-fi movies and surreal images of the cast superimposed on a galaxy-print background.

With hair posed to appear floating, the actresses provide exceptional physical representations of violent spaceship lift-off, zero-gravity suspension and painful collapse on the planet's floor.

But aside from reinventing the audio-visual wheel, the writing and design of the story shine the brightest.

The four main characters are each wittily named after the first four women to go to space: Svetlana, Sally, Judith and Valentina. The all-female astronaut crew journeys to Mars with a goal of preserving humanity, joined in their Buckminster spacecraft (named after the great futurist who popularised the idea of Spaceship Earth) by AI assistant Arabella. However, by the time they reach the red planet, their mission has been bought out by Elon-esque tech bro billionaire, Axel Parchment.

Rapidly oscillating between solemn philosophical contemplation, cheeky humour and surrealist non-plot, the cast drags audiences along with them in a rickety rollercoaster of emotions. At one moment, the astronauts are examining a massive oil spill from above Earth, debating whether it's a sad example of environmental collapse or a beautiful representation of human desire in visual form. The next, they're arguing over which season of Real Housewives is most appropriate for zero gravity viewing. Then, they're crawling around the spacecraft, making animal noises and sniffing at fisheye lens cameras.

Yes, it is strange. It is weird. But it is beautiful. A perception not so unlike the world today, which is frequently referenced throughout. One astronaut admits to using AI to write a letter to her mother, arguing, "That’s the whole point of technology, removing the need to connect with each other." When the space company's CEO tells the crew that reproduction is necessary, they mock the rise of traditional gender roles via trad-wife content on social media.

Every little piece is meticulously thought out and perfectly placed at perfectly odd angles. The libretti remind audiences that the quirky details are stitches in a much larger tapestry.

"This storm is what we call Progress," they sing. "We don’t know how to be what we are."

MARS asks audiences to look two ways: first up, then within. What do we do when our future is under new, sinister ownership?

It is a production you won't soon forget.