The Girl Who Fell In Love With The Moon is an imaginative, whimsical and captivating piece about our obsession with the skies above.

Entering  Greenwich Theatre, the audience are exposed to the the sound of the accordion rippling  through the air. While  the audience get seated, five white faced clowns, wearing mismatched costumes, appear on stage  on their journey to Greenwich Theatre, playing games and asking “Are we there yet?”.

The Human Zoo Theatre Company, a supported company at Greenwich Theatre are a team of storytellers, all bringing their own individual style to this amalgamation of star-lore and tales. A spotlight flashes on each member of the ensemble,  as they introduce each other through song.

Realising that they are in fact lost in the woods, Luna (Florence O’Mahoney) forces the troupe to perform their show to “no audience”. Luna starts to bring out jam-jars filled with fairy lights from the suitcases, and  the rest of the troupe follow her lead.  Explaining that infact these are constellations of stars, the audience are transported to Scarlett’s (Fleur Rooth) story of yearning to be with the stars. The first story takes Scarlett to Hollywood, providing a contemporary feel to the folktale. Using exaggerated gestures and shadow puppetry to emphasise the extreme nature of Hollywood and those who inhabit it, the tongue-in-cheek rhymes causing the audience to erupt in laughter. Rooth embodies Scarlett’s naivety especially when she takes a drug to make her feel she is in the stars.

Each vignette uses different elements of clowning and storytelling techniques to captivate the audience, which is enhanced by Lucy Read’s visual design and the troupe’s multi-use of props. They use vintage suitcases to make a car; books and a mountain within the  hour. The variety of puppetry, mime and movement enables this production to satisfy all ages.

Multi-instrumentalist Freddie Crossley, whose character Jack joins the troupe to feel like he belongs to a family, performs a sweet song about being extraterrestrial, adding light relief after a rather morbid ending to the story of ‘The Man Whose Head Was Stuck in the Clouds’.  The songs are predominantly original and witty,  yet the show’s finale is an acoustic version of Coldplay’s ‘Sky Full Of Stars.’ These lyrics somehow capture the emotions of Luna as she vanishes to be with the moon.

Like the stars themselves, The Human Zoo Theatre Company is fascinating to observe. The seamless timing and the imagery in the language such as the line, “semi-skinned, silky skinned man in the moon”, encapsulates the beauty of the unknown and allows the audience to understand how Luna fell in love with the moon. It is quite magical how this ensemble makes these unbelievable stories, believable,  simply when they hint at the fact  that the stories are based on some form of truth in the characters.

 

The Girl Who Fell In Love With the Moon was playing at Greenwich Theatre. For more information and tickets, see The Human Zoo Company website.