Review by Steve Bennett

Moonjourney sets out to spoof those overblown, pretentious concept-rock acts of the Seventies and Eighties; which is a tall order as they’re already so ridiculous as to be beyond parody.

Talented actress Alice Lowe plays an obvious Kate Bush clone, mixed with a touch of Toyah, who presents her vision of a mechanical, dystopian future via the medium of rock opera.

She hooks up with a couple of space adventurers who, after a series of escapades, vow to save the earth through the power of music. While the lampoon is obvious, too obvious really, this trio have really used the idea as a framework for some over-the-top stupidity of their own.

The problem is that each episode in the story is basically the same. Heroes encounter a strange, but cheap to recreate, space creature, deal with it, then move on to the next. There is some fun to be had with the no-budget special effects that would have done the old, rubbish Dr Whos proud, but there’s nothing more to it than that, so the format soon dulls.

The trio also seem to have been exposed to a little to much interpretive dance and expressive moment, as they spend a lot of time striking poses and hamming up the choreography; but again the joke wears thin, fast, for those who haven’t been to drama school.

Lowe, who proved her abilities by almost stealing Garth Marenghi’s Perrier-winning show, and her cohorts are on fine, subtly stupid form when it comes to performance, including the uncannily accurate song parodies. But there’s just wasted on so much slight frippery.

There are  some nice  moments when the script dares to  deviate from the pattern, or when  a sly bit of deliberately bad acting captures the moment – but these are only incidental to the tedious nonsense at the show’s core.

Mostly, it’s like listening to the most self-indulgent Yes album you can find.

Review date: 1 Jan 2005
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett