Paul Glubb and Nic Gorman have put on an ambitious two handed play The Glorious Sky Awesomes. It told the story of the Space Race in parallel tales, those of Yuri the reluctant Cosmonaut and John the military trained Astronaut. Both had parental issues and each of their lives was touched by a Nazi rocket engineer.
It was interesting that the script included actual players in the Space Race and by using the facts as a starting point, they constructed a wild and outrageous fictional story around the events. This allowed them to make most of the characters highly cartoonish to generate the humour while referencing historic events and pop culture added many laughs of recognition. The rather late timeslot allowed lots of innuendo and depictions of sexual perversity to invade the stories to cater for the base humour crowd.
The staging of the show was highly imaginative with the implementation of small props to represent large objects that were manipulated as crude puppetry, a soundtrack composed of selections from a stack of vinyl records that were changed by the actors between scenes and some shadow work from behind hand painted flags/banners. It often came dangerously close to being the most amateurish production imaginable (as if two kids had been force fed sugar and let loose with all manner of costumes and toys) but it was held together with a compelling script, its moments of sadness contrasting the wackiness making for a well rounded theatrical piece.
The pair certainly had their work cut out for themselves with scenes alternating between the two stories, requiring constant costume changes. Clothing of varying complexity was used to transform the actors into the larger than life people inhabiting this universe. This chopping and changing often spiralled out of control as parts of one costume became part of the unrelated next to speed swapping while other items were misplaced, requiring creative adlibbing to ensure the scene went on. The complicated audio component and the plethora of props made this a far from smooth affair with extended, possibly ad libbed, dialogue used to cover for periods of darkened stage. Sticklers for order could be frustrated by this while others would see it as embracing the anarchic spirit of the show.
Paul and Nic worked well together with each hamming it up and utilizing plenty of dodgy accents to enhance the zaniness of the parts. The relative constraint of the main characters was perfectly played to contrast the outrageous ones. When interacting with each other, the pair’s comic timing was usually spot on but they sometimes struggled to keep a straight face; which again could be seen as either unprofessional or endearingly playful and infectious fun.
The Glorious Sky Awesomes was a great romp that fiddles with history to provide plenty of laughs. If you allow yourself to get swept away in their enthusiasm plenty of fun will be had.
Visit the NZ Comedy Festival website for booking details.