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.