Review: Balloon Girl – A tech giant, a teenage skydiver, and an exciting, climate-focused time-travel spin

Theatre Sherman, a high-wire drama: Hannah McPeak, brother-of-tech machismo, reality TV and Mars escapes in the style of Mash, bring laughs. A present-day tech billionaire, a space race, and a hot-air balloon hurl time travel at the audience and, for good measure, a life-size talking seabird. Surprisingly, given the ti

His show takes local history as its starting point, a 19th-century balloonist's assistant who performed a parachute stunt in the skies above Cardiff. It throws a modern-day tech billionaire, the space race, a time-traveling hot air balloon, and — for good measure? - A life-size talking seagull.

Surprisingly, considering the intricacies of writer-director Hannah McPeak's moving drama, it soars through the clouds, sizzling with humor and imagination along with a keen sense of unwritten history to become a complete blast.

Louisa Maud Evans was a real-life 14-year-old girl from Bristol who was recruited to make a parachute jump from a hot-air balloon at the 1896 Fine, Industrial and Maritime Exhibition. He had little experience of skydiving and died after an unfavorable wind launch into the Bristol Channel.

Louisa appears in different guises in McPeek's story, which begins with Carol Gaudron (Elaine Phillips), a famous tech billionaire and descendant of August Eugene Gaudron (Kieron Self), the balloonist who hired Louisa for the ill-fated stunt. The opening scene is a reality competition show in which a gullible young woman from Bristol wins a televised rocket trip to Mars. "Let's get humanity off this planet and into the stars," says Carroll, who has all the sincerity of a technology visionary turned venture capitalist. It's a great way to join a 19th century quest to conquer the skies and make public spectacles of the ambitions of the modern tech brothers in the space race.

The story ranges from satire (about everything from reality TV to artificial intelligence to journalism) to a whimsical time-travel adventure for Carol, with a young sailor cook, Louisa (Marie Fleur) and a talking seagull (Oliver Wood). There are shades of A Christmas Carol - in the air - as the trio redemptively travel to the past and future before bringing a transformed Carol back to their present.

So many plots, such rich imagination and great voice lines alongside a serious underlying message about climate and planetary resources. Sometimes it comes on too thick and fast and overwhelms you, but even in its confusion it's entertaining.

Hayley Grindel's collection alternates between beautiful small-scale puppet shows and large hot air balloon images. McPeek has created several shows for this theater, but this surely has to be one of his best. An aerial victory