The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik

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A young man in a wetsuit strides on stage, wearing a torch in front of his face like a pilot fish. He peers sternly at the crowd, inasmuch as one can be stern when dressed in neoprene, then disappears into the shadows. A large circular projection screen springs to life and what follows is something like WALL-E meets Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – under the sea.

The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik uses a clever mixture of animation, puppetry, live action and music to tell the story of the eponymous deep-sea explorer, who sets off beneath the surface of a flood-ravaged Earth to find his lost bride and rescue humanity from “Mother Nature's menopausal outbursts”. But as ambitious as this sounds for a one-man show, Alvin Sputnik's Australian creator Tim Watts makes it look easy.

Light on dialogue, Alvin Sputnik hinges almost entirely on visual exposition – and it is here that Watts excels. Hand-drawn animations and intricate sound design create a distinctive aesthetic—something akin to a more sweet-natured Mighty Boosh—and the spirit of childish escapism is such that it's hard not to be drawn in. 

It feels at first like there might be an environmental moral buried in there somewhere, but Alvin Sputnik wisely steers clear of preaching and focuses instead on being a simple, gently bittersweet tale of adventure, with plenty of funny little vignettes along the way – the moment when Alvin discovers a disco ball is a particular gem. It's chronically twee, yes, but also completely charming.