In 1982 truck driver Larry Walters fulfilled a lifelong ambition and passed into aviation history. Tethering 45 weather balloons to his deckchair, he rocketed almost three miles into the air - to the consternation of passing pilots, who reported to astonished air traffic controllers that they had just seen a man in a flying lawn chair. Asked afterwards why he had done it, he replied: "A man can't just sit around."
This delightful, quirky little show from New York's 78th Street Theatre takes Walters's story and uses it as a metaphor for soaring dreams and earthbound lives, obsession, the fickleness of celebrity and the way that what goes up must come down. Ten years after his daring feat, his life empty of meaning, Larry Walters killed himself.
The production has a wacky edge that matches the craziness of Walters's dream. It makes witty use of songs about flying as we see Walters work out the aerodynamics and checks and balances of his flight with the aid of some children's helium balloons and Coca Cola bottles.
There is too much comic padding and a couple of the characters seem extraneous to the story, but Kimberley Reiss as the girlfriend with her feet on the ground and Toby Wherry as Larry are terrific in a story that celebrates foolishness and ingenuity in equal measure.
Until August 27. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
