I leaned over to my the­atre-going com­pan­ion just before the start of this show and point­ed at one of the audi­ence-made space­ships lying on the floor of BATS’ Ran­dom Stage. “That space­ship looks a lot like a dil­do,” I remarked, pre­scient­ly as always, and he agreed.

The audi­ence, in an ode to pre­dictabil­i­ty, chose it.

And thus, we all embarked on a fan­tas­tic space jour­ney with the crew of the apt­ly-named SS Wang, who were deter­mined to save the uni­verse from the hor­rors of the patri­archy (and unwa­tered plants). Which, in the space of about 50 min­utes, they absolute­ly man­aged to do.

Space Patrol 5 is the brain­child of Christchurch’s Court Jesters, and was spear­head­ed in Welling­ton this year by for­mer cast mem­bers Matt Pow­ell and Bren­don Ben­netts. It’s an entire­ly impro­vised show, and a spoof of well-known sci-fi shows and works.

From chal­leng­ing the great and ter­ri­fy­ing might of the Kar­dashi­an Empire to every­day exam­ples of misog­y­ny clos­er to home, the crew of the SS Wang (which was renamed the SS Pussy after defeat­ing said empire), brought us an excit­ing and hilar­i­ous show with some love­ly moments of sin­cer­i­ty.

I’d espe­cial­ly like to note the actor play­ing the botanist, Straw­ber­ry Fields, who took an utter­ly bizarre premise and man­aged to cre­ate enough sci­en­ceish tech­nob­a­b­ble — alo­ev­erasto­po­nous (sp???) plants, indeed — to fool even the great­est of sci-fi con­nois­seurs. I did­n’t quite under­stand the intri­ca­cies of the Kar­dashi­an Empire’s evil plans — some­thing involv­ing the alo­ev­erasto­po­nous plants — but in the end, it hard­ly even mat­tered.

Space Patrol 5 was com­pelling sci-fi and very, very fun.

 

If you’re in Welling­ton, check out the New Zealand Improv Fes­ti­val! It’s on from now until Sat­ur­day. Tick­ets from their web­site.