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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Arifa Akbar

Balloon Girl review – tech tycoon swirls with tragic teen parachutist in a crackling, time-travelling climate romp

Up, up and away … three actors look out from a balloon's wicker basket. Mari Fflur, Oliver Wood and Elin Phillips in Balloon Girl at Sherman theatre, Cardiff.
Up, up and away … Mari Fflur, Oliver Wood and Elin Phillips in Balloon Girl at Sherman theatre, Cardiff. Photograph: Kirsten McTernan

This show takes local history as its starting point, that of a 19th-century balloonist’s assistant who performed a parachute stunt in the skies above Cardiff. It throws in a current-day tech billionaire, the space race, a time-travelling hot-air balloon, and – for good measure? – a lifesize seagull that speaks.

Surprisingly, given the complications of writer-director Hannah McPake’s high-wire drama, it lifts off, swirling through the clouds on its air-bound set, crackling with humour and effervescent imagination along with a keen sense of unwritten history, to become a complete blast.

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