Review by Becky
“There is one thing better than the fulfilment and meaning of working hard to achieve a dream: loving people with all your heart.” — Christina Hammock Koch, Artemis II Mission Specialist, via Instagram
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| Photo by Alex Brenner and Tristram Kenton. |
Humans are obsessed with possessing what we cannot — or should not — have. That’s why 14-year-olds drink vodka and squash in parks, people Klarna thousands of pounds’ worth of designer clothes, and I have a “House Fund” in my Monzo account. Donations to the latter are, naturally, welcome.
It is also why we want to explore space. And why some people — typically ageing, botoxed billionaires whose kids have gone no-contact — want to colonise it, too.
Flyby’s greatest sin, unfortunately, is that it has opened at a moment of renewed fascination with space travel. And perhaps my own greatest sin as an audience member is that I know more about space than the average person — I have ADHD and went to the Kennedy Space Center when I was eight, so I never really stood a chance — while also having spent far too many hours writing BA and MA essays on musical theatre.
Together, these variables made for an afternoon rather more Apollo 13 than anyone might have wanted.
Let me get the space-related gripes out of the way first, as 99% of people won’t be bothered by inaccuracies. This is the singular instance in my life where I make up the 1%.
Daniel steals a spacecraft while the rest of the crew are showering. Except you don’t really shower in space; the water would gather into blobs, making it a pain to clear up. On a short mission, you’re looking at wipes. It’s also unlikely everyone else would be indisposed at once, limiting the opportunity for Grand Theft Spacecraft.
Where, exactly, is Capcom?
If I received an email on Christmas Eve saying, “You’re off to space!”, I would first assume it’s a workplace phishing test and then be absolutely furious. At the very least, ring me.
Daniel seems to have impulsively asked to be an astronaut, apparently bypassing years of rigorous training used by agencies like the ESA and NASA. Equally, having just broken up with the daughter of a famous director who traumatised a generation of children feels like the sort of thing that comes up in a pre-space background check.
Where, again, is Capcom?
Daniel remains in his spacesuit throughout. The man deserves, at the minimum, a jumpsuit. He also does not need shoes in space, especially as he has no plans to return to Earth.
And still: where is Capcom?
I cannot recall whether Daniel is meant to be on a capsule mission or a space-station mission. If the former, there is no second spacecraft for him to steal. If the latter, there is still no second spacecraft for him to steal unless another capsule has recently docked.
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| Photo by Alex Brenner and Tristram Kenton. |
His stealing such a capsule would make Breaking News bulletins around the world.
Realistically, his most plausible route to space suicide would be sabotaging his oxygen supply during an EVA and quietly suffocating. As there is apparently no Capcom, no one would notice his vital signs disappear.
Though I appreciate that this makes for a less theatrically satisfying narrative.
So, too, does the fact that most spacecraft are now heavily reliant on mission control and remote systems. But Flyby seems to exist in a world where mission control is either on a smoke break, muted on Teams, or optional. Which leaves the whole enterprise feeling less like a credible drama and more like somebody found an Xbox controller and decided that was probably sophisticated enough.
But what finally makes Flyby fall out of orbit is not its ambition, nor even its occasionally lax relationship with scientific plausibility, but the book itself. Too often, it conflates explanation with drama. The three-person ensemble — strong enough to deserve better — is left breaking down basic concepts and feeding us exposition we didn’t need, while Emily and Daniel’s jokes about hentai feel stale and unsurprising, given such jokes passed their best before date a decade ago.
And if the songs are the whole thing’s heat shield, they are a little like Artemis I’s: stronger than the rest of the vessel, but not quite strong enough to stop whole chunks falling off in descent.
Daniel’s the one who steals a spacecraft, yet we learn far more about Emily than we ever do about him. The result is a lopsided emotional structure in which the person committing the story’s central act remains frustratingly outlined. Meanwhile, Emily becomes so exhaustingly explored and so relentlessly abrasive that she reads less as a complicated foil and more as a toxic antagonist.
I spent much of the show assuming it wanted me to see their relationship as semi-tragic, when in fact I wanted to wave a massive red flag in Daniel’s face.
This leaves the stakes in an odd place. The consequence of Daniel running out of fuel is, evidently, death. But tragedy requires more than mortality; it demands that we feel the cost. Flyby never gets there. By the time the danger hardens into something final — roughly two-thirds of the way through the final song — the emotional dynamics are so grating that the loss lands with all the weight of a chocolate finger floating in space.
Though I cannot stress enough that there are glimpes of a much stronger piece buried inside this space oddity. Some of the songs have genuine pull — catchy enough that we were still humming the refrain on Oxford Street afterwards — but they almost make the book feel thinner by contrast. I came away wondering if it might work better with fewer songs, a radically reworked script, and the confidence to become a play with music rather than a musical determined to over-explain itself time and time again.
My frustration, unfortunately, also extends to the show’s world, with the ensemble opening the show as ESC employees — perhaps even senior ones — who clearly know what happened to Daniel. Which only raises more interesting questions than the musical ever gives itself time to answer, at a bloody brisk 1hr 45mins straight through. Why was there no safeguarding? How did no one know about Daniel’s recent breakup?
Why not begin after the theft, with Daniel back on earth? A disciplinary hearing, a psych evaluation, some institutional reckoning that gives the story a chance to emerge through testimony, deflection, or even blame? Vignettes of Emily bullying Daniel might feel more compelling in this context. That version may at least trust the audience to assemble the tragedy for themselves.
As it stands, Flyby keeps digging suggestive little holes and then wanders light-years in the opposite direction. Over, and over, and over again.
Emily’s parents are given enough stage time to convey some inherited damage, but not enough to make them feel like more than NPCs. Daniel’s own family life remains even sketchier: a few telling shards, 2,033 moments of criticism in one of the show’s better songs, and then a void where a human ought to be.
None of this is the fault of the cast, who do admirable work with far from perfect material. Nor is it helped by direction that often feels actively unhelpful: on a square set with audience on two sides, actors repeatedly end up planted downstage with their backs to the room, blocking the action. And the giant turtle — which, I naively assumed after the second preview, might be quietly retired — remains, bafflingly, in place. It moves a bit more quickly now, but it still feels like self-sabotage.
And that’s the real disappointment. A story about space should not be stuck on Earth, weighed down by baggage; it should have enough fuel that it leaves you with a weird, aching sense of human smallness made bearable only by human closeness.
Flyby gestures towards grandeur but never earns it, because it cannot make us believe in the bond at its centre. Without that shared trust — the sense that these people might really hold one another aloft — no amount of stars, songs, or spectacles will ever get it off the launchpad.
Flyby runs at Southwark Playhouse Borough until Saturday 16th May 2026. For tickets and more information visit https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/flyby/
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| Photo by Alex Brenner and Tristram Kenton. |
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