This Way Up @ C
It’s 2.40 on a ‘presumably rainy day’ in Edinburgh – where do you want to be?That time slot's top tip is ANTLER Theatre’s Fringe debut of This Way Up, according to the director, Jasmine Woodcock-Stewart. If being propelled into orbit accompanied by David Bowie’s Space Oddity doesn’t whet your galactic appetite, then perhaps the retro-synth soundtrack of this musical comedy will have you taking a rain check on the inevitable Fringe flood.
“The soundtrack came from messing around in rehearsal with a kids' keyboard,” says Jasmine. “The keyboard was just a silly little thing that I bought from a car boot sale for £1, but it fit perfectly in rehearsal when we were playing around with ideas of what it is to grow up – and considering how small it is – it produces a pretty amazing sound.” The soundtrack is performed live on the ukulele and keyboard by two of the actors (Nasi Voutsas and Richard Perryman), “so you get a free gig thrown in as well.”
"Excellent" – I think – ukulele and free gig. I also hear something about an adventurous ‘cardboard-box’ set. Will cardboard fanatics everywhere finally get to indulge their passion? Is it just an enormous fire hazard? Or is there a deeper meaning to what is shaping up to be a visually exciting performance?
“We use more than 30 boxes in the show – of varying sizes – and they are the world of the piece. In the beginning, Alex (Daniela Pasquini) has packed up from university and moves into her new flat. The boxes have this real sense of the temporary – your life is in a box ready to go anywhere.” Jasmine explains the company shares a collective empathy with newly graduated Alex’s situation. With ANTLER being made up of Acting and Contemporary Theatre students from East 15 Acting School, Jasmine says it’s both "scary and amusing," how close the story of the jaded artist is to their own experiences. “There's this sense for the first time that the future is unknown. All of a sudden that girl who took your lunchbox at school is married with kids, the boy who was always reading Terry Pratchett is a lawyer earning 50k a year, and you're hoping to do something, well, arty.”
This Way Up concerns young people trying to find their feet, in limbo between their creative ambitions and being a responsible adult: having to pay cardboard tax, work in a cardboard call centre all day and come home to play in your debt-filled cardboard spaceship. You get the (cardboard) idea.
Despite Alex’s compromising situation, the production promises to maintain an optimistic melody alongside the obligatory intergalactic themes. “As well as it being very funny, it's a heartfelt story, with some wonderful characters and a hell of a lot of warmth,” enthuses Jasmine. “The idea of space travel is strong throughout the show as being something you could always do when you're 7. The thought of doing it as 23 year olds or adults, is suddenly not cool, or acceptable, or sane. David Bowie's Space Oddity is one of those songs you would want to go to space to – and in the end they do.. but I can't tell you how!” Far out.