REVIEW: The Edge of Space

Reading Time: 2 minutes

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Consistently bizarre, subtly profound, and breathtakingly beautiful.

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I hope I never forget The Edge of Space. I close my eyes and I can see it now: red bulbous furniture, blue-faced aliens in white crinolines, flying cheese puffs, wire flowers refracting light. Perfectly housed within the iconoclastic Sands Films, Veronica Harrington’s The Edge of Space defies imagination: everything is extraordinary; there is so much to say.

The Edge of Space could be described using big words – ecocide, ecological colonisation – but, simply, it is about the loveliness of nature and how it suffers from humanity’s constant need to explore and advance. The story is told on the planet, Vivo, where blubbering human Peter (“such a melt”) crash-lands. He was on a mission from Earth to find an alternative planet – there are 3 months until air pollution and food shortages end humankind – and he is sucking his thumb when Roz, the local alien, discovers him lost and alone.

Roz is a misfit on Vivo. On Vivo, the aliens reproduce by dancing with the Yip tree and technology is a dirty word. Roz can’t dance and wants to document her world, so she finds a happy kinship with Peter, a failed scientist on Earth. But Peter soon teaches the aliens how to meddle with nature and the Yip tree starts dying. When Peter finally reconnects with Earth, he has to decide whether to save humanity or save Vivo from humankind.

Jacob Read is brilliant as the blubbering Peter, spasmodically jumping and jerking his body. Sharon le Grand plays Roz’s mother as a benevolent Ursula, stuffing unholy amounts of vibrato into each note. And Roz’s siblings are so strange they are actually indescribable. Even when there is less committed acting – Peter’s posh-totty captain and side kick feel like friends who wandered on stage – it only adds to the charm. It all feels collaborative and handmade, done with giggles.

Costume designer Jack Lambert paints Vivo aliens blue, gives them tiny tufts of hair, mummifies them in white cloths and then reshapes them with white crinolines. And their alien landscape, beautifully imagined by Collumba Williams, has props you want to steal. It has the visual electrification of a Baz Luhrmann made on a (suspected) shoestring budget.

Then we have the music. From the confines of a small balcony, Jamie Travis, Luca Mantero and Jacob Read, control the stage’s atmosphere. They waft sound over the audience – it is stunning – and a perfect complement to the cast’s funny and frivolous singing.

By the end of the musical, Peter has corrupted an entire planet. Not from malice but because he is human – and humanness seems to spread like a disease. Vivo’s Tiny Theo becomes a glutton once he discovers the human cheese puffs. Death looms. The pretty pictures and delicate sounds and silly acting point towards an unexpectedly unsettling question: are humans destined to always destroy what is good?

By the time this review is out the run will be over. A huge shame. The mad mass of people who worked on The Edge of Space have created theatre that is full of heart and achingly beautiful. I wish more people felt and made like this; that more theatre was this magical.The Edge of Space was on at Sands Films from 16th to 19th July.