Moon Landing

Published Friday 7 September 2007 at 13:20 by Pat Ashworth

Derby Playhouse is doing some monumental and groundbreaking work these days. Stephen Edwards’ musical drama of the Apollo 11 moon landing is big, ambitious and technically brilliant. It magically recreates all the awe of the landing but also gives a sharp insight into the personalities, politics, rivalries and tensions of the NASA space race from its outset.

The race is seen through the eyes of the tortured Buzz Aldrin, played by Glenn Carter, a man seduced by the mystery of the moon and desperate to be the first to walk on it, but who couldn’t cope with the aftermath and ended up in a psychiatric hospital.

We are powerfully drawn in as spectators, simultaneously seeing at three different levels the mission control team, the wives and children, and the astronauts suspended high above the stage in the lunar capsule. Superb video projections show us what they are seeing as they look outwards and upwards or to their television screens. Disbelief is suspended: we really do wait with bated breath for the capsule to touch down.

The music contributes most when the three wives, played by Rebecca Lock, Cheryl McAvoy and Annalene Beechey are singing in witty riposte or outpouring of emotion, and in big chorus numbers like What Was it Like?, where the press mob the astronauts on the ensuing tour.

But at other times, it overpowers or is inappropriate, used in instances like a speech to congress where straightforward dialogue was all that was needed. I dare to think a straight play with music would better have achieved its ends.