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The award-winning artiste demonstrated her quirky humour in light-hearted yet respectful tribute to 50 years of space-flight devised from a concept by Piers Bizony in collaboration with astrophile scriptwriter Andrew Smith and performer Jamie Wood and enriched with atmospheric music by Paul Riordan.

James Lewis’ set comprises a huge wall of cardboard cartons of every size available, a remotely controlled projector, intercom devices and bags of ‘moondust’, boosted by imaginative lighting and inventive sound effects.

Niki's enthralling performance with sensitive support from Lee Hart ,is directed by Guy Dartnell.

Projecting familiar images of Soviet cosmonauts and US astronauts, the performers portray the concept of Humanity’s spiritual mission and the biological need to explore our place in the universe. Space 50 justly earned approval from Minehead-born futurist writer Arthur C.Clarke.

Special effects get better as the show progresses and culminates in sheer magic when we share, through video. Niki’s childhood vision of landing on the moon and finding hoped-for treasures, exhilarating experience and joyful secrets.

The Stage By Jeremy Brien
Mon 12 February 2007 No less an icon of the space age that Arthur Clarke, octogenarian author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, has sent his good wishes to this scatter-gun commentary on the first 50 years of space travel, commissioned by Bath University’s Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts.

Working in theory to a text by Andrew Smith, whose best-selling book Moondust traced nine of the 12 astronauts who walked on the moon, performers Niki McCretton and Jamie Wood mix a mélange of personal recollections and meandering narrative with mime, newsreel film and installation work, built around some of the key moments of our journey to the heavens.

Some elements, such as the weightlessness mime and the confrontation on the surface of the moon of McCretton’s tinfoil spaceman and Wood’s fully booted and suited astronaut, work well. There is even a welcome infusion of humour now and then, highlighted by a Wilson, Keppel and Betty-style sand dance in the moondust.

The Times by Donald Hutera
27 February 2007
In making this new touring show, Niki McCretton tapped straight into the heart of a harmless romantic obsession. As a girl she longed to travel into space. Now, in an age when space tourism is feasible, she and her collaborative team have used theatrical skills to engineer a clever, gently ironic and much lower-cost alternative.

Although it offers up facts, anecdotes and film about the Russian and American space race, Space 50 (named after a half-century of space exploration) is far more the knowing flowering of childhood fantasy than a history lesson. McCretton shares her fertile ground with her fellow performer Jamie Wood. As a teenage surfer, he tells her, he found in the ocean the kind of gravity-defying freedom that McCretton always imagined she’d find drifting in the heavens.

Directed by Guy Dartnell, this commission by the University of Bath’s Institute of Interdisciplinary Arts possesses a genuine low-tech charm. A wall of cardboard boxes serves as a multiple projection screen. Simply opening up a couple of flaps creates a capsule-like space in which McCretton, with or without Wood, can either remember long-ago dreams or pretend to be living them.

Moderately engaging by themselves, together the performers play like a pair of dedicated, inventive school kids. They conduct amusing endurance contests: who can balance on one leg the longest or blow bubbles through a straw without stopping for breath. The walkie-talkies they use lend their voices just the right touch of long-distance distortion. There are song and dance interludes, too — a lying-down duet accompanied by ukulele and yodeling, and a nifty soft-shoe shuffle on sand subsequently used for a magical mini-cam sequence.