The Star Seekers

This summer, from 8 August–1 September, The Wardrobe Ensemble (originally founded from the Bristol Old Vic's young company) have brought their show The Star Seekers to the National Theatre's Dorfman Theatre to inspire three to eight-year-olds about outer space. I was lucky enough to attend a sneak preview with an invited audience and school group, and I loved it!

Alph, Betty and Gammo, played by Ben Vardy, Jesse Meadows and Jack Drewry, take their audience on an adventure beyond the milky way, large sections of which are improvised based on suggestions from the young people in the audience.

It's a glorious exploration of the imagination of children, with education and the wonder of theatre woven seamlessly in.

On a light-hearted mission to find three orbs which will power an energy drive designed to provide infinite power to the planet (a quiet nod to the need for a solution to our global non-renewable energy problem), Alph, Betty and Gammo visit planets made of whatever the children choose, and meet aliens similarly imagined by the audience. In remarkable feats of quick-fire improvisation they sing songs incorporating the names children have made up for these planets and aliens, as well as inhabiting characters such as stars and even a black hole.

The young people in the audience were completely transported, utterly focussed, and having a ball – especially when given license to participate in a meteor shower by hurling balled-up newspaper at one of the characters.

They also raised some really interesting questions at the end – not, as I had anticipated, about space, but about theatre: whether Alph, Betty and Gammo were the actors' real names; what they had made their set from; how long it had taken them to make the show… Apart from being brilliant fun, therefore, this production serves a dual educational purpose: engaging children as young as three with science and art at the same time. I can't recommend it enough.

Although no further tour dates after the National Theatre are currently booked for The Star Seekers, the show is available for touring and The Wardrobe Ensemble do outreach work including workshops in schools, so if you are unable to catch it at the National Theatre it's well worth getting in touch with them about possibilities for future performances.

The Star Seekers runs from 8 August–1 September at the Dorfman Theatre. To book tickets for the National Theatre production and for details about family workshops, go to tinyurl.com/td-a1-ntss

For more information about The Wardrobe Ensemble's education work, go to tinyurl.com/td-a1-tss