Theatre reviews: Mission to Mars

Sarah Freeman ***

My nephews don’t agree on much. The one who likes football also eats broccoli and has recently joined the school choir. The other doesn’t see the point of sport, regards vegetables with suspicion and thinks singing is for girls. So it was a rare moment of unity, when they both independently decided the ending of Mission to Mars was in their own words, “a bit weird”.

I can see their point. When you’ve spent an hour and 10 minutes watching two astronauts travel to the red planet only for the action to end just before they get there, disappointment is inevitable.

Unlimited Theatre’s latest children’s production is based on the real science of planned Mars missions. It looks impressive as the show whizzes through the 200 days it would take to get there from Earth, with Clare Barrett and Sebastian Lawson turning in decent performances as the two intrepid space explorers, Dr Gale Iles and Dr Stefan Losch.

Unfortunately, it’s also a production which takes itself a little too seriously, shoe-horning in unnecessary morals and at times it is guilty of blinding with science. Sometimes it feels like being taught about space by an over enthusiastic supply teacher who desperately wants to be everybody’s friend.

This isn’t a bad production, it’s just that children’s theatre can be done so much better.

To February 12.