APOLLO 13: THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON (Original Theatre)*****

 

APOLLO 13: THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON (Original Theatre)*****

By Angel

Link: https://originaltheatreonline.com/productions/4/apollo-13-the-dark-side-of-the-moon

Available until: 31^st December 2020. Pay once and watch as many times as you like.

Age guidance: 11+

The first moon landing was Apollo 11. That went well so they tried again with Apollo 12. That also went well so they did Apollo 13. That turned out to be the kind of mission that makes superstitious people think they’ve got a point.

This is a film about Apollo 13. It’s set in the present day and in 1970 when Apollo 13 happened. It’s kind of like a film within a film. There’s a woman called Patricia (Poppy Roe) who I guess is some sort of producer and she’s making the film and interviewing the two astronauts who are still alive, Fred Haise (Geoff Aymer) and Jim Lovell (Philip Franks). They’re quite old men now but they have a lot more brain cells than Patricia.

In between little bits of interview it flips back to 1970 and you see the 3 astronauts in the rocket. Fred is played by Michael Salami, Jim is played by Christopher Harper and the other guy Jack Swigert is played by Tom Chambers.

Patricia wants to know what happens but she also wants to know stuff like if they had really deep conversations about how they were feeling and if they argued a lot which is just like so typical of some people. Jim says no way, we’re professionals, we don’t do that. So I thought Patricia was really annoying but a totally realistic example of a 2020s TV person.

Things did get a bit deep and there were arguments but I guess it’s up to us to decide if the bits from the 1970s are what really happened and the men just chose not to go into that sort of detail or if it’s Patricia’s film with extra bits she invented to ramp up the drama. It could be either.

It was a good film. The soundtrack was really atmospheric. Sophie Cotton is the composer. I liked the different characters of the astronauts. Jim was really cool and professional, Fred was a bit more relaxed and jokey, Jack was a late replacement for a guy who was exposed to German measles so he knew what he was doing but it was quite new to him.

I really liked the scenes in the rocket. I knew what was going to happen but it was really tense. It was really well filmed with some great shots of the moon and it looked realistic. When things started to go wrong it got even tenser. The technical stuff sounded technical but it was easy to understand. Things got even tenser as more and more stuff went wrong and they knew they might not all get out of it alive. There was a woman (Jenna Augen) who was on Earth and she was talking to them and asking them to do stuff and sometimes she went quiet and you didn’t know if she was doing stuff or if communication had cut out. The whole idea that Jim had to do lots of maths on a bit of paper to try to save their lives was mind blowing. One digit wrong and that’s it.

It was a really good film and I think everyone should watch it.