Theatre / ben vardy
Review: The Star Seekers, Wardrobe Theatre
This wide-eyed celebration of space and imagination starts down underneath the theatre in Kingsdown’s welcoming White Bear pub, before the show has even begun. Two of the performers, Jesse Meadows and Ben Vardy, are down among the waiting audiences, giving the kids their ultra-important astronaut name tags.
It’s a simple but effective device that gets the young audience on board – and sets the tone for the next hour, a uniquely collaborative adventure in which many of the story’s twists and turns and supplied by the audience members and improvised, with impressive creativity and quicksilver pace, by the three-strong cast.
The premise of the show, a collaboration between the Wardrobe Theatre and Wardrobe Ensemble, is simple. Astronauts Alf (Vardy), Betty (Meadows) and Gammo (Jack Drewry – all three hugely engaging performers, effortlessly relating to their young audiences) must jet off into space on a quest for some key ingredients to rescue some essential machinery back at base. And they want us on board with them.
And so we’re off, through the solar system, on through asteroid fields, past a black hole and a series of planets performed into existence on the spot from audience suggestions.
We land in strange worlds whose landscapes and inhabitants are comically otherworldly (again, thank those young imaginations for this); we experience bewildering changes in speed and gravity; we feel the vastness and limitless fascination of space – all of this created via some vivid imaginations, some top-notch improvisational skills and plenty of dextrously-created props.
Children aged between three and seven with even a modicum of interest in the great unknown up above our heads will get pulled into the irresistible gravitational field of this beautifully wide-eyed, enthusiastic and good-humoured show. They’ll also take away the satisfaction of having helped to shape its journey across constellations of possibility.
The Star Seekers continues until Friday, February 20 at the Wardrobe Theatre, 1pm & 2.30pm daily. For more info and to book tickets, visit thewardrobetheatre.com/#/the-star-seekers/4587662335
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