Given how well nigh impossible it’s long proved to license Dan Dare, it’s something of a considerable surprise to discover the following in several of the Theatre – Fringe sections in July 1972’s Time Out:
Sadly, it appears the show, beyond the memories of those who were there and a few photos and the like, is lost to time. It’s a terrible shame. There’s no film and there’s no script to be found. What is known has been sagely gathered by the likes of the estimable John Freeman at Down The Tubes, which also contains pointers to yet more valuable information to be found in the 42nd issue of the Spaceship Away comic-magazine and at the Half Moon’s own on-line archive.
Scraps, and only scraps, of information can be found in newspaper archives about what was only the venue ‘s second original production. For example, in July 15th’s Guardian, the Miscellany column discussed the Half Moon’s perilous commercial situation. The theatre was, readers were told, in dangerous of “waning away”. Having been reconstructed, at the cost of some controversy, from a disused synagogue, the venue had now “converted the conversion” for Dan Dare. As the poster at the head of this page promises, the Half Moon’s performing space had been designed to look like a space ship. The combination of a beloved, famous comic star and the imaginative set alone should have surely drawn the attention of the press. It would have seemed to be a perfect production for the school holidays. But The Guardian‘s Miscellany told us, there had only been one review. By the 30th of July, the production had left the theatre after 19 days. It was probably always going to have been so, but it would’ve been heartening had its closing been more widely and sympathetically reported.
Unhelpfully, a review of the performance by Robin Denselow appeared, with some irony, in the very same paper on the 28th July, just a single night before Dan Dare’s final performance. Two observations dominated the piece. Firstly, Denselow paid great attention to the fact that The Mekon was being played by a “girl”, which feels like, from this distance, a distinctly disrespectful label. Secondly, he wrote about the children watching the performance, who had, it appeared, no problem at all with the gender-swapped villain. Perhaps they were simply too young to know much about The Mekon at all, given that Dan Dare was currently without a berth in British comics. (The earliest Guardian piece explained, charmingly, that “The local kids love it, but the Half Moon is too soft-hearted to turn them away if they haven’t got 30p for a ticket”.) What the youngsters did struggle with, Denselow wrote without any measure of concern or censor, was self-discipline, with fights apparently taking place both in front of and behind him. It doesn’t seem to have been anything but exuberance, for a more menacing atmosphere would surely have merited a reference. Despite such distractions, his judgement was that Dan Dare was “very good”, despite “under-acting” from the three on-stage professionals and a tendency for the set’s “bangs and flashes” to overshadow the story being told.
The Almanac Of The Fantastical will return tomorrow
The Almanac Of The Fantastical 