Edinburgh Fringe Reviews: Two Space-Age Shows

In a great piece of alternative comedy featuring lo-fi props aplenty, Siân and Zoë’s Luxury Cruise through the Horrifying Vacuum of Space [★★★★] tries to teach us about mindfulness in a rambling series of sketches. Deadpan, flamboyant, surreal and occasionally satirical, the sketches themselves go over and out of the space theme into the truly surreal, from a party-pooper shadow to a professor addicted to mints.

Audience interaction is a must in a venue this cosy but it all feels very safe, sometimes amounting to simply extended periods of sparkling eye-contact. This is a seminar, after all, and our two gallant hosts are taking us away from the stresses of the world and into the horrifying vacuum of space with their trusty on-board computer who may or may not be trying to kill us. As a duo, Siân and Zoë are very much in tune with each other and have a great feel for the room. This being alternative comedy, there are great moments of stretched-out awkward silence used to excellent comic effect. In all it looks like these two colourful and excitable performers are having a blast, and it’s hard to avoid picking up the feeling.

A similar enthusiasm powers Matthew Highton’s I, the Universe [★★★], nicely making it feel like watching a nephew do a play he made up during the summer holidays. As the Universe, Highton can see the future and the past, and tells a tale of two lovers lost in space. Most of the show is taken up with fun facts about our collective future, so that the story falls by the wayside and doesn’t actually involve much action.

Scrappy and lovable for it, with impressive costuming, this is a blasé look at the terrifying infinities of space and at ourselves as a species. The character in this piece of character comedy being the Universe itself, Highton gets to gloss over a lot of astronomical detail and pass off a lot of jokes with ‘the human mind can’t comprehend it’.

The effort put into making props for the story section of the show is a little wasted, as the story itself doesn’t get to be the focus of the hour. There are a lot of tangents that an all-knowing four-dimensional being can go on however, and fitting them all into a structure is a tricky task.