3.5/5★
Lasha Bugadze’s play The Navigator won an award at the 2011 International BBC Playwriting Competition, where it premiered.
Bugadze’s play centres around 44-year-old Rostom, an ageing, lonely man who struggles to build relationships with those around him, particularly women. Indeed, Rostom’s characterisation is reminiscent of other male characters written by Bugadze, all of whom over-sexualise the women around them, and who often imagine emotional ties that do not necessarily equate with reality.
The text opens with Rostom commenting on the displacement of the Soviet-era elevator attendant from his office building, an analogy for the way society is moving in terms of adopting modern technology and leaving the past behind.
Rostom soon faces such adaptations himself when his boss sends him to conduct fieldwork in construction zones located near Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Instead of having to rely on maps, Rostom is told to use a GPS, something he finds slightly repulsive — that is until the navigation device begins speaking back to him.
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Once the conversations begin, Rostom quickly switches his affections from his coworker Clara to his GPS, with each becoming increasingly obsessed and jealous of the other in a plot somewhat reminiscent of the 2013 film Her.
It is never entirely clear whether the actions happening on the page are real or whether, as his colleagues seem to believe, Rostom is simply losing his mind. As his relationship with his GPS deepens, Rostom’s life gradually falls to pieces, before rapidly reaching a point of no return.
In the end, the play appears to resolve itself in full-circle — this time Rostom being the one to fade into the background of history as technology adapts and moves on, just as the Soviet-era elevator attendant from the beginning.
At only 147 pages (the play when performed only lasts 55 minutes), Bugadze ensures the action is constantly speeding forward, the tension constantly ramping up until Rostom’s final moments and the work’s conclusion. Overall, it makes for an entertaining read, one that makes you question the technological progress of our society as well as that of loneliness in today’s modern age — though with Rostom, this loneliness appears to come at the expense of women, an older prototype of what we might call an incel today.
The play won an award at the 2011 International BBC Playwriting Competition, with the judges calling it ‘enchanting’, ‘authentic’, and ‘joyous listening’. As a text, it makes for a dynamic read, one that has you constantly turning the pages even if you find yourself disliking almost all of the characters present.
Book details: The Navigator (2011), translated into English by Maya Kiasashvili in 2024 for Sulakauri Publishing. Buy it from the publisher here.
