Niki McCretton, Space 50

Review in Issue 19-2 | Summer 2007

They say that Space has no beginning and no end; it simply goes on and on. After about two hours I was beginning to get that feeling during the premiere of a show that celebrates 50 years of space travel and in which Niki McCretton tells us about her childhood dreams of going to the moon. Assisted by several fellow astro-nuts she has created a series of vignettes based around the theme of lunar exploration, but the whole thing took a good half an hour to ignite and take off. One cosmonaut laboured for about a light year to wrap the other in foil, bubble wrap and masking tape. During those moments the theatre, like deep space, began to feel like a very lonely place. For me, the most charming parts of the show were the most whimsical; a delightful lunar sand dance; astronauts speaking through walkie talkies to mimic the sound of space chatter, a hand-held micro camera that recreated a live lunar landing scene and an astronaut surfing a lunar sea. Apparently there were many artists from various disciplines contributing to this show and I think that they have simply put far too much in. This is the negative side of the current buzz word 'collaboration'. Don't get me wrong: the show is not a complete waste of time and Space; there is a good piece in there somewhere, but slack directing and editing make it way too long. Hopefully it will be heavily edited once it's out on the road – I think that the show could easily lose an hour. That will save the company a fortune in sticky tape and bubble wrap so my advice to the director is to take out that midnight blue pencil and go at the script like a lunatic.

Presenting Artists
Presenting Venue
Date Seen
  1. Feb 2007

This article in the magazine

Issue 19-2
p. 31