Review: OUT THERE, Union Theatre, 23 September 2016

With the likes of celebrity billionaires, Elon Musk and Richard Branson, championing commercial space travel and products as commonplace as the mobile phone reliant on satellites, rocket science should be losing its status as the universal comparison against which everything else is straightforward (actually, it was never the rocketry that was difficult, it was the gyroscopy required to direct them). So now is a good time for do-it-yourself garage rocketry to provide the background for James Bourne and Elliot Davis's new musical, Out There - but does it have the right stuff?

On quitting a 1969 NASA mission after his wife's death in a car accident, Newman Carter leaves his five-year-old son with his aunt and disappears, becoming the subject of conspiracy theorists everywhere. Forty years on, that son, David, is a aspirant Musk, with plans to build a spaceport in the USA, but he's having problems with his gifted but headstrong son, Logan, who goes on the run after one too many TDAs. Given an address to hole up in, located in a one-horse town in Texas, he pitches up at an ageing recluse's farmhouse and, well, it's hardly a spoiler to reveal that man's identity, is it?

With the writers' pop pedigree in bands like McBusted, the songs are, not unexpectedly, the strongest element of the show. With some country inflections to match the location (and wobbly accents), they're sung well by the ensemble cast and, if not brimming with showstoppers and catchy hooks, pleasant enough on the ear.

But the book is pedestrian and, at times, wholly unbelievable (Texas is not a jurisdiction in which I would be keen to test laws concerning assisted suicide, for example). Everyone scowls continually rather than smiles and the intergenerational conflict between the three alpha males of the Carter clan can feel like an episode of The Jerry Springer Show when it gets loud - which it does. Father and son also get some love interest from a glamorous attorney and a salt-of-the-earth mechanic, but neither show any charm nor wit, and you have to think that these women could do better, even in a town whose only crop is tumbleweed.

Dave Willetts does what he can with his grizzled old-timer, but Neil Moores has almost nothing to work with as the grown-up neglected son, his 360-degree transformation towards the end simply presented with no real motivation at all. Luke Street's lairy lad, Logan, is thoughtlessly insulting to Imelda Warren-Green's tomboyish mechanic when they first meet, but, without learning much about himself, he soon gets the girl anyway. Melissa Bayern is the standout amongst the support cast, her crystal-clear singing a delight, even if her part, like all the female roles, is merely there to illustrate the men's characters - the crass gender politics is rooted in the years long before space travel.

This musical, which reaches for the stars (and feels a bit like Star Wars at times), needs stronger characters and a more credible and engaging book if it is to get off the ground.

Out There continues at the Union Theatre until 8 October.

Photo Scott Rylander.

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