"It's Not Rocket Science" by Letter For Letter Theatre.

Nonsuch Studios, Nottingham.

Prior to taking this production to the Edinburgh Fringe this year, Letter For Letter Theatre present "It's Not Rocket Science", for just the one performance, at Nonsuch Studios on Lower Parliament Street, Nottingham. This is part of Nonsuch Studio's ‘Women’s Her-Story Month’ celebrating female creatives and women-led projects for the month of March.

The story follows Eve Jackson, who has been fascinated by rockets and space travel since she was a small girl. This fascination led to Eve studying physics at school and then to university where she discovers that, being a woman in a male dominated society, her plight was not going to be as easy as her male colleagues. What Eve also discovers are the women who were "happy" to just roll over and go with the flow; doing what the male contingency expect of women.

This is backed up by recordings of interviews from more than twenty female aerospace professionals from all over the world. The sound bites of the interviews were played during the scene changes, which made for a very smooth transition between the chapters of Eve's life.

The play follows Eve becoming a mother and juggling this new life with her working environment, highlighting the difficulty of combining both areas of her life, culminating in Eve appearing on TV, talking about the book that she had written called "It's Not Rocket Science"

Written and Directed by Cecilia Alexander, and was originally presented at the Nottingham New Theatre last year; it then transferred to the Edinburgh Fringe 2021, but the run was cut short due to Covid. There has been a lot of research done in writing this play regarding the subject of aerospace, and it shows because of the in-depth information which make up sections of the play.

Laura Turner plays Eve from a child obsessed with space, strapping a rocket to her barbie doll, through school age Eve making paper planes that could fly the farthest, on to University where she showed signs of standing her ground as a woman in a male dominated society, ending up being fired for daring to stand up to the big wigs of space travel, but then coming up trumps for woman-kind in later years and becoming a role model herself for younger women.

It was interesting to note the progression from a child, whose choice of bedtime story was Star Trek, to the Eve we see at the end of the play. Laura made you believe that she was Eve, every step of the way at every age.

Stef White and Holly Twells play every other role in the play, and when you think of the to0me span that this play covers, you can imagine how many other characters there are to play. Now you know that I love a good accent in a play, well these two talented actors, in the various roles, take on several accents along the way.

Stef gets to play Eve's father, the teacher who further inspires Eve, a conference speaker, a university student who tries to sexually harass Eve and another Uni student, a conference speaker, an aerospace engineer, Eve's husband and an interviewer. All these characters reflect the positive and negative influences on her life and career.

It's also a nice touch to use a lounge version of "Fly Me To The Moon" as the music behind the blind date meeting between Eve and, what turns out to be her future husband. I also love the chat up lines regarding the food and meal time preferences, slightly cheesy but filled with electricity between the pair.

Holly, like Stef, also got the opportunity to multi-role as Eve's daughter, a Uni student, Eve's school friend, a young woman at Eve's book launch interview, a conference speaker as well as an elderly male aerospace legend. I wondered at this stage why Stef wasn't used to play the male character, and then realised why minutes later.

There is a danger when playing multi-roles that you will see the same actor as each role. I was convinced by both Stef and Holly that their various characters were who they were; there were no blurring of lines that made you see the same actor in every role. What I am trying to say is that with just a clever change of clothing, they took on another character and made you believe they were those characters, making you see past the actor and seeing the character role. Something that not every actor in a multi-role play can pull off successfully.

Simple lighting design, which did just what was asked of the lighting design, to close and open each scene and chapter of Eve's life, was thanks to Sam Osborne.

Hand in hand with the Lighting Design is the informative Sound Design containing the sound bite interviews, which also drew our attention away from the props and scene changes. Rory Cooper, who also composed the original music, was responsible for the sound design.

The show was produced by Laura Wolczyk along with Zoe Smith, who was the production manager.

I keep mentioning the "chapters" of Eve's life and this was done by art work on an easel which was revealed at the scene changes. This art work was created by Molly Symms.

This play is a really interesting insight into the life of a passionate and driven woman who is determined to stand up, not only for herself, but for womankind, highlighting sexism and misogyny in the work place, as well as in life.

Lasting only one hour, with such a great story, and the great acting skills of all three actors, the time flew by. There are some lovely comedy moments and I think that Cecilia obviously recognises that a serious message can be delivered using comedy in such a way that the message sticks with you long after the show ends, something that I have recognised in previous plays by Cecilia that I've had the pleasure of reviewing.

It was a big hit last year in Edinburgh, and I just know that it will be even bigger this year when it tours.

"It's Not Rocket Science" at Nonsuch Studios is a one-off show which was out of this world. Just a shame that the run was not a longer one at this brilliant performance venue.