"After a career packed with theatrical triumphs Sir Peter Hall, the British director, put on 'Via Galactica' and showed that when he really tries he can produce something in an altogether different class. He cannot, however, claim credit for the Sci-fi musical's plot, which was so complex that the Uris Theatre in New York inserted a special explanatory sheet in the programme.

"It explains how all the people in the musical are painted blue 'to avoid wars and confusion' and wear cone-shaped spinning hats to control their emotions. The story was based on the life and times of a space-age sanitation expert. The New York Times drama critic, Clive Bames, wrote: 'The well-publicized use of trampolines, to suggest weightlessness, suggests nothing more than people pointlessly bouncing up and down on trampolines. The mechanical space garbage cart floating in the sky was 'all too clearly chained to the stage' and the spaceship from Earth 'looks like a displaced light fitting.'

"The shaw closed after seven performances."