The Suburban Spaceman
by Kirsty Eyre

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The Suburban Spaceman is a brand-spanking new modern musical by Kirsty Eyre, mixing a parody of corporate life with an adventure to space. Are humans maybe the most alien beings of all? The Truman Show meets The Office and The Apprentice on Planet Billabop, packed with songs, ditties and fun!

Kirsty was interviewed for Networking, the newsletter of Network Theatre Company.

The Suburban Spaceman? What a title! How did you dream that up?

I was introduced to The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band’s Urban Spaceman song by our music teacher at school. She had an unfortunate lisp, accentuated by ‘spaceman’ and our class would relish in requesting it every week for pure comedy. The poor woman - she must have known! The song still tickles me today. Separately I knew I wanted to write about your average Joe Bloggs, who lives in suburbia, works nine ‘til five, has 2.4 children, washes his car every Saturday… and is suddenly propelled out of his surroundings into an adventure in space. It fitted: The Suburban Spaceman.

Come on then, what’s The Suburban Spaceman all about?

I don’t want to give away everything but in a nutshell the Head of the Universe commands a mad professor to create a human robot who infiltrates a space technology company. A parody of corporate life is played out. I think most people who work for large businesses can relate to the ridiculous ritual of meetings for meetings sake, an obsession for political correctness, acronyms and buzzwords. In real life would you really run something up a flagpole to see if the budgie bites?

A whole corporate culture exists in the city and whilst it’s not pretty it is a means to affording the polar weekend life of luxury in suburbia. The Suburban Spaceman breaks this everyday routine when a group of everyday people have to form a rescue party to free the professor from Planet Billabop. Through song and dance we meet goodies, baddies and of course aliens. 

So it’s a musical? I didn’t know you did music…

Neither did I! I’d written a chunk of the script and found myself humming a ditty about a house-husband who wanted to reclaim his masculinity and then the rest followed fast and furious. I have come up with the melodies and lyrics but as I cannot score music, I am working with Nigel "Shale" Morgan, our Musical Director, to transform them in to polished songs. I didn’t half feel a wally singing song after song in to his Dictaphone between cups of tea! Nigel has great musical talent so I can’t wait to hear the end result. 

What sort of songs are they?

A mixed bag really - plenty of witty ditties, a love song, a scary song and a couple of reworked numbers, which you’ll recognise. It should be a fun show to be part of as well as fun to watch. A couple of the songs would sound even better with guitar as well as piano but whilst Nigel has only two hands that’s not going to be possible unless we can find a guitarist or indeed another pianist as Nigel plays both. Any offers gratefully received! 

And Kay Murray is directing this one? How does Kay feel about directing aliens?

Yes, The Suburban Spaceman will be in Kay’s capable and experienced hands. She’s looking forward to it whilst quietly wondering how on earth to build a space shuttle, create a planet Billabop set and turn actors in to aliens. It might be worth taking out shares in face paint companies who are bound to up their sales over the next few months! If anybody wants to help build our shuttle, please get in touch with David Harvey our stage manager.

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