The title of the show 'Yesterday, in space' against a pink and purple galaxy background

The good space­ship Yes­ter­day is the first rock­et ship to launch from Aotearoa New Zea­l­and and we get to come along for the ride! Her new crew are determ­ined to show us a good time. What a pity they’re stuck in the middle of pro­fes­sion­al rival­ries, con­fus­ing per­son­al rela­tion­ships, and an aster­oid belt…

All those troubles add up to an enter­tain­ing space-opera music­al. The Cap­tain (Brod­ie Taur­ima) is anxious about the voy­age so has enlis­ted his old­est friend to be the Pilot (Molly Mason). The Co-Pilot (Beth Mar­ri­ott) knew them both at the academy. The First Mate (Troy J. Mal­colm) abso­lutely wants the trip to be a suc­cess while The Sci­ent­ist (Lou Pri­or) is proud to be on the ship with The Android (Jules Daniel). The Guard (Emma Maguire) is def­in­itely not get­ting paid enough. It’s all very soap opera.*

The songs were fun and catchy although no back­ing track meant that some of them didn’t have the energy they should have. There were some very sweet har­mon­ies in the chor­al singing dur­ing the open­ing. I par­tic­u­larly liked the use of three lan­guages – te reo Māori, Eng­lish and sign lan­guage. Solos weren’t always as suc­cess­ful but ngā mihinui to the cast for singing a cap­pella. Char­ac­ters were most suc­cess­ful and hil­ari­ous when the act­ors first embraced the ste­reo­type and then broke it.

Heaps of fun.

*Apo­lo­gies to the cast if I get any of their names wrong – the Face­book event and the Fringe web­site don’t agree on spelling. I’m also using the char­ac­ter descrip­tions rather than names because there isn’t a pro­gramme and the cool cred­its at the begin­ning went to fast for me