Balloon Girl lifts off at Cardiff's Sherman Theatre

Hannah McPake's Balloon Girl opened at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff, and according to the Guardian's review, it works. The paper calls writer-director McPake's high-wire drama "a complete blast" — praise that arrives with a note of surprise, given how much the show piles onto one stage.

The premise is dense. A 19th-century balloonist's assistant who performed a parachute stunt over Cardiff shares the stage with a present-day tech billionaire, the space race, a time-travelling hot-air balloon and, in the Guardian's phrasing, "a lifesize seagull that speaks." The review summarises the result as "A Christmas Carol in space" — a comparison aimed squarely at the show's Musk-style Martian escape fantasy and its Dickensian interest in moral correction.

What does the show actually deliver?

The Guardian's critic, reviewing the production on 15 October 2026, credits McPake with a drama that pokes fun at three targets at once: tech bro machismo, reality TV and the billionaire impulse to abandon Earth rather than fix it. That satire rides on a production the review describes as "swirling through the clouds on its air-bound set, crackling with humour and effervescent imagination."

Two threads anchor the fantasy. One is local: the historical balloonist's assistant, a figure the review situates in "a keen sense of unwritten history" — the past that official records skipped. The other is contemporary: the tech tycoon whose Martian ambitions the show treats as punchline and warning in equal measure.

The review's verdict is unambiguous on the bottom line. Despite the complications of juggling period stunt, climate allegory and a talking seagull, the production "lifts off." That is not faint praise; it is the review's central claim, and it survives its own scepticism about whether all the moving parts could hold together.

What is not said

The Guardian's notice, as excerpted, does not name the cast, the designer of the airborne set, or a closing date for the run. It offers no judgement on the second half of the evening or on the climate argument beyond the framing words of its headline — "tragic teen parachutist" — which suggests the historical storyline carries real loss, not only comedy. Readers weighing a trip to Cardiff will find the enthusiasm clear and the practical detail thin.

What the review does establish is that a regional theatre premiere has turned a piece of Victorian Cardiff circus history into a time-travelling argument with the present. For a venue outside London, that is the so-what: Balloon Girl gives a Welsh stage a show the national press treats as worth the flight.