The Wider Earth review – Natural History Museum's Darwin spectacular

Natural History Museum, London
Charles Darwin's adventures aboard the HMS Beagle are told through engrossing puppetry and painterly projections

This is an unusual enterprise. The museum's Jerwood Gallery has been turned into a theatre to house a production by Australia's Dead Puppet Society, telling the story of Charles Darwin's five-year-long voyage on HMS Beagle. Written, directed and co-designed by David Morton, it is visually terrific even if the script rarely rises above the level of a schools broadcast.

Morton rightly reminds us that Darwin (played with boyish enthusiasm by Bradley Foster) was only 22 when he was plucked out of Cambridge in 1831 to be the resident naturalist on the Beagle's historic journey. We also get a hint of the arguments between Darwin and the ship's captain, Robert FitzRoy, over slavery, colonialism and religion. But the script is more concerned with providing information than drama, and perpetuates the idea that Darwin, through his theory of evolution, single-handedly undermined orthodox faith, whereas the debate between science and religion was longstanding.