Space Hamlet – The Cockpit

Space Hamlet continues at The Cockpit, London until 31 October 2026.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

First performed in a short run at Norwich Puppet Theatre last year, this raucous reimagining of Shakespeare’s tragedy as a Star Wars-like space opera with a 1970s glam rock-inspired score and a Norse legend-infused mythology has a rabble-rousing energy and scrappy, can-do attitude that Luke Skywalker himself would be proud of.

The bar for rock ‘n’ roll sci-fi musicals has been set incredibly high, with Return to the Forbidden Planet and – that behemoth of genre-bending glam rock revelry – Rocky Horror providing massively large, sparkly heel-heeled boots to fill.

But lyricist RC Staab and composer and co-lyricist Dan Sturman’s likable musical spoof, directed with energy by April Nash, also throws some inventive Muppet-like puppets into the mix, inviting comparisons to another musical blockbuster, Avenue Q.

The ambition is admirably high then, even if the execution doesn’t always quite match it. But a committed, multi-tasking cast of eight gives it their all, and The Cockpit’s small but well-proportioned studio space puts audiences right at the heart of the action, sometimes stunningly lit by Matt Cross’ starry lighting effects and projections.

The first half of Staab’s book stays remarkably faithful to Shakespeare’s plot – even if the action is relocated from Elsinore to a space station and Polonius is recast as a Yoda-like alien. It also takes Hamlet’s grief over the loss of his father and anger at his uncle Claudius’ throne snaffling machinations seriously – possibly too seriously for what is pitched as a fun, space-set romp.

Highlights in the first half include a comically assured Ruby Bardwell-Dix as the lovelorn Ophelia, with her jaunty Queen-like song ‘Let My Love Be’ including some cheekily smutty lines such as “I’d rather die a death than not have Ham on my breath”. But only Lucas Fox’s deliciously slippery Claudius brings any real authentically sounding glam rock stomp with the swaggering ‘I Wanna Be Your Daddy’.

Things improve considerably in Act II, when the story diverges quite a bit and is all the better for it. Rather than moping around the palace after Polonius’ death, this Hamlet (a petulant Nic Gordon) gets sent out to fight the Norwegian space force, crash lands on a planet filled with thieves and scoundrels and is thrown into a pit to face the monstrous beast that his father supposedly died fighting.

It is not only the production that takes a giant, hyperspeed-assisted leap forward in the second half, as Staab and Sturman’s songs also start hitting their mark more consistently. Fun ensemble number ‘Old Denmark-3’, with its unscrupulous market traders and shades of Oliver!’s Who Will Buy?, makes good use of Sturman and puppetry director Lottie Johnson’s imaginatively scuzzy fuzzy creations, and has fun nods to other sci-fi franchises, such having as a Facehugger from Alien and Little Shop of Horrors’ Audrey II among the traders’ wares.

Shem Jacobs also makes a real impact as a booming, Viking-helmeted King Ham – seen, in one of the production’s many clever little genre touches – via a projected video image rather than as an apparition. His Meat Loaf-aping ‘Never Turn Your Back On a Snake’ proves that the songs sometimes work better as direct parody, but the volume level of the recorded backing tracks is a bit too variable for them all to land.

Late on, in ‘The Game’, Queen Gertrude’s pep talk to Ophelia about surviving in a male-dominated society also punches above its weight, lifted by Lauren Bryant’s powerful vocals and well-pitched performance as Gertrude. It’s a song that is reminiscent of ABBA’s more heart-wrenching duets but also works in a place beyond parody, and really shows off Staab and Sturman’s songwriting, enhanced by Acer Smith’s orchestrations.

For a modestly budgeted production, the set is impressive, especially when Sturman’s space palace backdrop morphs into the airlock that Ophelia threatens to throw herself out of. Jo Myers’ striking costumes – which combine Norse armour with sci-fi chic – also bely the production’s budgetary constraints.

There are plenty of strong elements here and an impressive ambition, even if, at the moment, the production doesn’t always manage to be more than the sum of its parts. But when the cast is firing on all cylinders, and the stars are aligning on the production, the farce is strong with this one.

Chris Bartlett