Review: The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy Radio Show Live! – Sunderland Empire
Geek heaven, I’m in love again.
Love of sci-fi, comedy, theatre, and the medium of radio all collide for this celebration of Douglas Adams’ cult story.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show Live! is a stage recreation of the BBC Radio 4 series first broadcast in 1978, which would be transformed into, amongst others, a trilogy of five novels, a TV series, and a film.
Many of the original radio cast are reunited for the stage version, including Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, Geoff McGivern as Ford Prefect, and Susan Sheridan as Trillian. As Mark Wing-Davey was unable to appear in the current tour, Radio 4 favourite Mitch Benn steps in as Zaphod Beeblebrox.
I must say that the temptation to write a negative review of the show under the pseudonym “Marvin the Paranoid Android” was almost overwhelming.
With scripts in hand, the actors rocket through the weird world of HG2G, with its language that has become part of everyday discourse. If you’ve ever translated a word online, there’s a high chance you used a ‘Babel fish’, at least until the main search engines opted for blandness.
For something which is ostensibly a re-enactment of a radio recording, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show Live! is a very visual show, with lights that consume the theatre, an efficient set design using projection, and actors with an acute sense of daftness and aptitude for live performance.
The current UK tour boasts an impressive range of guest actors and performers who appear at different venues as the voice of the eponymous book.
For the performances at the Sunderland Empire, Miriam Margolyes (BlackAdder, Harry Potter) occupies the armchair to explain the concepts and neologisms from Douglas Adams’ wonderful mind.
Speaking of Adams, there are some lovely tributes to the much-loved author, with an additional nice acknowledgement of comedy legend John Lloyd’s (Spitting Image, BlackAdder, QI) contribution to the original radio series.
Lloyd himself is due to make appearances later in the tour in Brighton and Milton Keynes.
The live guitar-led band, with their nods to, amongst others, Pink Floyd and Doctor Who, add to the atmosphere, along with some lovely old-school audience participation.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show Live! is a great celebration of a wonderful piece of creative insanity.
Funny and inventive, it’s one not to be missed for long-time fans, and for those curious to know why their slightly odd friends (and Siri) tell them that the meaning of life, the universe and everything is 42.
Date of live review: Wednesday 25 September 2013
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy Radio Show Live! is touring around the UK. For tour dates, click here.
