Things didn’t start well for this performance of Summer Nights in Space with a technical hitch delaying the start. As a lot of the show involves projected images, it didn’t really help matters that when this finally did work, it wasn’t properly aligned and rather than the lovely central projection you can see in the photo at the top of this page, everything was slightly adrift of centre.
The show itself is billed as “a glam space rock musical, rooted in classic science fiction, using the bizarre setting of musical theatre to combine the song and dance of entertainment with the really big questions”. Unfortunately the only thing that stuck from that sentence was ‘bizarre’. The plot was clunky in places, the songs were lacklustre and instantly forgettable and if there was any dancing, I somehow managed to miss it.
With a cringe-worthy rap towards the end, the credibility of the show finally disappeared into a black hole. The band, though accomplished players, were a further distraction sat awkwardly in white boiler suits, ‘wacky’ alien glasses and sparkly deely boppers looking like they’d lost their way to a sinister children’s party.
To be fair to the team behind this, in terms of musical theatre shows, it is still in its infancy. It’s just over a year since writer Henry Carpenter created the show, and it does have some strong parts to it; there are the seeds of a good plot in there somewhere and the main character, Captain John Spartan (Matthew Jacobs Morgan) is fairly developed and interesting. The computer with a conscience has possibly the best lines in the show, though the concept is hardly original.
It’s worth noting that despite the quality of the songs and the lack of laughs in the script, Matthew Jacobs Morgan did an impressive job of putting the most into the material he had to work with.
Hopefully with some more development (personally I’d look at cutting some of the songs and just keep a few strong numbers), this show will come back next year and be more of a red giant than the white dwarf it currently is. Potential, but a long way to go.
Summer Nights in Space is running as part of VAULT festival until 19th February
