Escape from the Planet of the Day That Time Forgot

Space opera gets a skewering in Gavin Robertson’s affectionate homage to B-movies and their clichés. The story of a dotty professor, his lab assistant and his young ward who go on an adventure into outer space is a charming love letter to both theatre and film, extolling the virtues of imagination and playing with audience expectation. 

The three characters constantly draw attention to their stock types. Robertson’s Professor speaks in clipped, quick speech. Katharine Hurst as the young ward insists how much she loves to cook and iron – there’s a huge number of ironic jokes about a woman’s place: “You’ve got to come along or there’d be no one to do any screaming,” says the Professor at one point. Simon Nader completes the trio as the lab assistant from Sunderland.

The script is fine, with all the clichés we’d expect, while the staging is deceptively simple. It’s a deliberately huge story, sprawling across time and space, which would be impossible to represent on stage, so we’re asked to imagine it instead. The show then becomes a silly celebration of the power of imagination in theatre, as an ironing board (and then a Dustbuster) becomes a rocket and a wall of cardboard boxes is manipulated into different scenes and sets.

Triffids make an appearance, as do the Norse gods Loki, Freya and Odin (not Thor, as “he’s in Hollywood now”). It’s a loveable show, often quite funny, even if it never really takes flight.