Fine tribute to maverick pianist

Erik Satie’s Faction (Forth, Pleasance Courtyard) Verdict: Virtuoso performance from Alistair McGowan ★★★★✩ Escape From The Planet Of The Day That Time Forgot (Assembly Roxy) Verdict: Space caper ★★★✩✩

WHO was Erik Satie? You may never have heard of him, but you’re likely to be familiar with the liquid magic of his piano music, Gymnopedies.

But the beauty of Alistair McGowan’s one-man show about the early 20th-century French composer is that he leaves this enigma intact.

Satie was a reclusive, misanthropic, hypochondriac — he once described himself as a ‘pretentious cretin’ — and McGowan imagines him, alone at his suburban home in Paris in 1916, when he would have been in his 50s.

He was an obsessive, who timed every minute of his day, allowing only four minutes for meals. The possible reason for this is given in a moving revelation at the end. In Satie’s own words, he paints a picture of the man, without a linear story, that is as impressionistic and elliptical as his music. But the really impressive thing about McGowan’s skittish performance is his musicianship: he shows himself to be an accomplished pianist, playing Satie’s haunting pieces with a subtle touch and melancholy spirit.

It is a fine and elusive production, directed by Charlotte Page (who is heard singing along). What it’s not is a big crowd-pleaser, and you do have to work to put the surreal impressions together. In this we are helped by animated projections: scratchy cartoons of streets, people, rooms, stars and musical notes.

It’s good to see McGowan released from mimicry and he comes across as not only an engaging actor, but a renaissance man, too.

RETRO comic melodrama is a Fringe staple: sometimes it’s naff, sometimes it’s jolly. Happily, Escape From The Planet ... is the latter. An amusing Forties sci-fi spoof, the story follows a saucy young housekeeper (Katharine Hurst), her un-PC professor uncle (Gavin Robertson) and a Geordie handyman (Simon Nader), as they fly off on an ironing board rocket to investigate a mysterious meteorite.

The props are all cardboard boxes and there’s a flashing dustbuster space module; all synced with big sound effects. Frivolous — but choreographed with ingenuity and charm.

In-jokes abound, but these are offset by gags about chocolate (Galaxy bars!) and an inevitable nod to Flash Gordon. An intergalactic blast.