The Stage

Into Thin Air!

Published Friday 2 September 2005 at 16:00 by Mark Shenton

Sometimes a show’s title provides its own epitaph. Into Thin Air is precisely where this spoof musical has both come from and will shortly vanish to as well.

A sort of Brigadoon meets Privates on Parade, it revolves around a rather under-populated Royal Air Force base that has already mysteriously been lost in time when it vanished in a radioactive fog whose residents are seeking to put on a Follies show. It then rather insanely - and inanely - throws in alien abduction for good measure too.

But the writing is excruciatingly thin, both in the emaciated pastiche melodies and on the feeble joke and characterisation front. Robert A Gray, who claims to have at least learnt to type during his own two years of national service in the fifties, did not, however, learn to write a musical.

It is left to director/choreographer Stewart Nicholls to attempt to animate this mess with any kind of theatrical appeal. He is not helped by a negligible budget - no designer is credited for the feeble painted backdrops - nor by his putative star, Wayne Sleep, who may still be able to execute a nifty tap dance and some neat pirouettes, but can’t sing or act with any kind of conviction.

But then this is a show that fatally lacks the courage of its absence of conviction on every front. You are not meant to believe in any of it - it is a relentless rictus smile of a musical - but then why not go for broke and avoid the attempts at sincerity entirely?