Fringe round-up: Apollo 11 | Apollo 11 Take 111 | Chaika: First Woman in Space | Rocket Girl | First Piano on the Moon

Meet the performers on a mission to make a giant leap for Fringekind
The Rocket Girl Team. Picture: ContributedThe Rocket Girl Team. Picture: Contributed
The Rocket Girl Team. Picture: Contributed

THEATRE

Apollo 11, Greenside at Infirmary Street Olive Studio, Edinburgh, Until 10 August **

Apollo: Take 111, Zoo Southside – Studio (Venue 82), Edinburgh, Until 26 August **

William Pickvance in First Piano on the Moon. Picture:ContributedWilliam Pickvance in First Piano on the Moon. Picture:Contributed
William Pickvance in First Piano on the Moon. Picture:Contributed

Chaika: First Woman in Space, theSpace on North Bridge – Argyll Theatre, Edinburgh, Until 24 August ***

CHILDREN’S SHOWS

Rocket Girl, Underbelly – Iron Belly, Edinburgh, Until 25 August ***

First Piano on the Moon, Summerhall, Edinburgh, Until 18 August ***

The recent fiftieth anniversary of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission to land humans upon the Moon has caught the imagination, particularly that of a younger generation for whom space means adventure and possibility. Or at least, that seems to be the case when you look at the healthy audience numbers at any Fringe show with the hint of a connection to Apollo 11. Some are directly related, while others are barely linked at all, but each of the shows gives some hint of the wonder it still encourages.

The Ned Fleeman Theatre Company’s Apollo 11 has gone direct to the source – this ensemble piece for seven performers imagines just some of the people whose lives might have been changed by the first footsteps Neil Armstrong took upon the Moon’s surface, whether they were intimately involved or watching telly on the other side of the world.

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In Strickland Productions’ Apollo: Take 111 there’s just as much enthusiasm, although a crisper and more polished delivery. Yet in this story of a man enlisted in 1969 to cobble together a fake moon landing video by the end of the week, there’s also the sense that a featherlight Fringe farce has been hung on a somewhat shaky topical hook. There are glimpses of real humour here and there – especially in the thinly-veiled parodies of Stanley Kubrick, Marlon Brando and Laurence Olivier – yet largely the sub-Radio 4 humour coasts on the energy of those involved.

In telling the story of Valentina Tereshkova, the first and still the youngest woman to go into space, writer Mark Westbrook’s play Chaika (it means “seagull”, her codename in Russian) for the Acting Coach Scotland group is most revelatory not in the details of the Soviet Union’s cosmonaut programme – although these are interesting enough – but in the biographical facts of Tereshkova’s own life.

While the other women training to be female cosmonauts (a programme initiated purely to outrun the United States’ own stated ambition to send a woman into space) were drawn from distinguished university and military backgrounds, Tereshkova was a lowly textile mill worker – albeit one who, through following her own interests, had completed 165 civilian skydives by the time she was recruited. That the Soviets’ desperation to win this race meant they recruited female skydivers in the absence of suitably trained pilot candidates is just one of the curios the play unearths.

An all-female cast of seven play the roles of the cosmonauts and those around them through precise, illuminating monologues and subtle physical work, on their own and in tandem; one sequence where a skydive is performed by a character falling onto their comrades’ arms, for example, is tender and beautifully illustrative.

The resonant performances and dramatic sense of escalation in Luke Kernaghan’s direction aside, however, the piece strives for more than simple biography. When Tereshkova collides once more with the Earth, the first human face she sees is that of an old rural woman. “Did you see God?” she asks.

In Rocket Girl, Ditto Theatre Company – which consists of graduates from the East 15 Acting School – create a charming puppet tale for children which deals in themes of bereavement and recovery. It tells of Maisie Robinson, a little girl who dreams of being an astronaut in the games she plays with her single father (women in science are hinted at by many of these shows, sometimes in just one line), until his death from an illness contracted down the mines sends her off to a frosty auntie and a public school where women are expected to become nurses and mothers.

The wooden puppet of Maisie is charming and strangely identifiable in the hands of three of the six-strong cast, and the theme of escape to the imagination not always being desirable if it means running away is a poignant one, and worthy of the historical subject in which it’s rooted.

Finally, There is no Moon in First Piano on the Moon, the latest of Will Pickvance’s solo storytelling shows at Summerhall; instead, its presence is just a metaphor for a sense of youthful aspiration to achieve, despite the process seeming impossible and out of reach. In this case, Pickvance’s own personal ‘moon’ – at least within the story he’s created – was a concert at Mozart’s birthplace in Salzburg at which he was invited to perform as a teenager on behalf of his school.

Ever the guileless ingenue in his stories, Pickvance’s character has no clue why he should be here, despite the outrageous classical playing skill which he demonstrates from behind his beaten-up old piano. His delivery is as warm and simple as his playing is hot and breath-taking, and in his tale of being possessed by a haunted birthday cake and visited by the spirit of Mozart, who demands some swing be injected into his compositions, his audience – particularly those who are younger and moved by the music – are transported to a Salzburg of the mind. Which, says Pickvance, might as well be the Moon.

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