Before I even start this review, let me just stress how well the cast of Celes­ti­al Nobod­ies per­formed under pres­sure last night, the audi­ence space was quite chal­len­ging for mul­tiple reas­ons and they held the show well with com­pos­ure and poise – no mean feat con­sid­er­ing it was open­ing night as well!

Celes­ti­al Nobod­ies sold out dur­ing the 2021 Fringe Fest­iv­al and is back reskinned at BATS Theatre this week with a slightly smal­ler cast and pre­sum­ably some oth­er dif­fer­ences behind the scenes. It’s a poly­logue show, where the plan­ets are per­son­i­fied, and has a fas­cin­at­ing dis­cus­sion of queer­ness and human­ity under­scor­ing the entire piece.

Mer­cury’s (Annica Lewis) is telling their boss that they need a break, Earth (Lilli Mar­garet) and Moon (Lewis) are code­pend­ent in an unhealthy way and Jupiter (Q Walk­er) really needs their kids (oth­er moons) to just calm down for a moment, okay? Uranus (Laurel Mitchell) has Trauma, with a cap­it­al T, The Sun­’s (Nick Erasmuson as Eva Good­coq) singing songs and Venus (El Yule) needs people to stop look­ing at them.

It is a par­tic­u­larly nov­el idea to per­son­i­fy the plan­ets, but a wholly clev­er one. There’s not a lot of shows where you can see won­der­ful human per­form­ances and learn about the plan­ets at the same time, and I con­grat­u­late play­wright Evan­gelina Tel­far on her depth of research. The part of me that wanted to be an astro­naut for most of my child­hood is very tickled by this show. Tel­far’s writ­ing is zingy, full of puns and delight, but isn’t afraid to delve deep­er into the more heav­ier issues – at points the show dips into dis­cus­sions about queer­ness, domest­ic abuse and men­tal health.

Ana­stas­ia Mat­teini-Roberts dir­ec­ted the Fringe ver­sion of this show and is back for this iter­a­tion. Her strong dir­ect­ori­al vis­ion is quite appar­ent and lends itself to the show in a very good way. Ton­ally, the show goes through mul­tiple dif­fer­ent themes across just over an hour, each handled care­fully and dif­fer­ently, with char­ac­ters embra­cing the full­ness of the stage dur­ing dir­ect audi­ence address.

“Enjoyed” isn’t par­tic­u­larly the right term, but a moment I felt par­tic­u­larly heav­ily dur­ing this work was Earth’s scene. The mono­logue is groun­ded but not par­tic­u­larly emo­tion­al, the tone­less ache of a char­ac­ter in crisis. It can be easy to over­act scenes around depres­sion and men­tal ill­ness, but I found Lilli Mar­garet’s per­form­ance to be utterly com­pel­ling and very real­ist­ic. Annica Lewis’ Moon, when she joins the scene, is more eager-to-please and emo­tion­al, and togeth­er the per­formers make quite the pair, cre­at­ing a moment of des­per­ate, mis­placed intim­acy that is both wholly tox­ic but utterly res­on­ant. It’s a moment I’ll be think­ing about for a while, I reck­on.

Oth­er moments I found par­tic­u­larly rich with­in the show were Sat­urn (Q Walk­er), a parti­er at the end of their night dis­cov­er­ing things about them­selves – a dizzy­ing fumble with iden­tity that I know all too well; Venus (El Yule) and their battle with the voyeur­ist­ic desires of oth­ers jux­ta­posi­tioned against a clothes-chan­ging scene; and Uranus (Laurel Mitchell), a stand-up com­ic going wildly off the rails.

Crew-wise, the entire pro­duc­tion is stud­ded with a ton of loc­al tal­ent. Anne-Lisa Noor­dover­’s set is simplist­ic but gor­geous, with fluffy clouds and glit­ter that seem to warm the space imme­di­ately. Simplist­ic but lovely sound design (Phil Brown­lee) and light­ing design (Bekky Boyce) add to the over­all feel, cre­at­ing a space on stage that feels wel­com­ing, and serves its pur­pose to elev­ate the per­formers, rather than dis­tract from them. The room feels nice, actu­ally. Des­pite the heav­i­ness of some of the mono­logues, it is good to come into a place where the sta­ging, per­form­ances and script­ing is so utterly queer.

Celes­ti­al Nobod­ies is a play with a lot of heart at its core. Ideally, I think the work would have benefited from a slightly trun­cated script, and more of an over­all con­clu­sion, but over­all, it’s a play that takes the audi­ence places, and leaves a lot of heart in its wake. At points, it’s simply out of this world (sorry, I could­n’t res­ist.)

This show is on at BATS Theatre in Wel­ling­ton until the 13th of August. Get your tick­ets here.