A rather unusual pairing and an unusual week for me in that I didn’t go to the cinema. Instead, I caught two live performances – both part of the Glasgow Comedy Festival.
“Someone’s trying to sing harmony. Don’t.”
The simple way to find out if anyone knows this pair of disgusting, tasteless, swearing southerners is to point them to the YouTube video for “London Underground”. As well as that minor online hit, the pair (Adam Kay and Suman Biswas) have done a handful of albums and a live DVD, the proceeds from all of which go towards the Macmillan Cancer Nurses charity.
They’re excellent to see live, but only if your sense of humour finds the gutter to be familiar territory. Fortunately, Gill and I both still think farts are amusing so it made for a good evening. I had seen them at the Edinburgh Fringe a few months ago, and the set wasn’t hugely different. However, the two guys perform so well and the material is so damn funny I just didn’t care.
Half the fun was watching my other half convulse in laughter to songs she’d send her kids to bed early with no dinner for if they came home singing them. It’s great to see an audience genuinely enjoy a live performance so much and I don’t think anyone leaving felt they’d not had their money’s worth.
The Hitch-Hikers’s Guide to the Galaxy – live on stage
“Life? Don’t talk to me about life.”
There have been a handful of stage adaptations of Douglas Adams‘ most famous work, and they’ve met with varying degrees of success. I was informed of this one by ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha’s Dave Haddock, and we caught up for a beer with a fellow ZZ9-er before walking to the Kingshorn Theatre (a converted church) for a bum-numbing 2 1/2 hour performance.
The show is only for the comedy festival and put on by the Strathclyde University drama and radio societies. In the interests of reducing stress in those reading this review who may have a connection with the performance, I will first of all state that I really enjoyed it. Any and all faults I pick up in the following paragraphs are minor! It’s very rare that I get to see something on stage where I’m so familiar with the source material.
While there are several versions of the Guide, the radio one has been used for this show and it’s a very close adaptation with only some brief editing of content to shorten the running time slightly. Indeed, the show is split into 6 parts (with an interval between 3 and 4) with the “can our heroes escape?” and “last week, we left our heroes…” speeches intact.
The cast numbers around 15 people, including those doing live special effects. Almost everyone has at least two parts, including the narrator who also voices a tannoy system at one point. I’m afraid I didn’t get any names, but I think the Guide/narrator is unusual in that the part is played by a woman. In the original radio series, LPs, TV series and movie the part has always been played by a man.
Our narrator, I discovered in the bar afterwards when  met her, is a real fan of the series and was actually very nervous as she’d spotted our little crew in the audience. Obviously, we’d know if she cocked up. So she freaked a bit and was berating herself over a drink for stumbling over a few lines. She really didn’t need to as she did incredibly well. For the majority of the show, if I’m correct, she wasn’t even referring to her script (which all of the actors carry with them). Impressive given the volume of dialogue.
The show is unusual in its presentation. It’s partly like watching a radio show being edited in that everyone has that script in their hand, and plays multiple parts. It’s like a traditional play in that they do wear costumes (basic ones) and perform physically. There are also very few props (a stick, some chairs and the scripts themselves). It also works very well and is hugely enjoyable to watch, although on occasion the background sound did make it a little hard to heard the actors.
It did seem that the later acts (“fits”) weren’t as well rehearsed as earlier ones, and there were a couple of lines fluffed. In fairness, it’s nigh on three hours of work and the scenes where things weren’t completely perfect were generally full of complex dialogue or involved a fair bit of action as well.
If I had to pick out individual performances, I’d have to focus on those who played Ford (absolutely superb), Arthur (never once looked at his script), Marvin (amongst other parts, but he was brilliant as the paranoid android), Slartibartfast (probably the most consistently good actor of the group over all his parts from Slarti to the captain of the B Ark by way of Milliways’ waiter and ending as a caveman), and the Guide herself. This isn’t to belittle the others at all. A superb cast and all deserve full credit.
They were all a joy to talk to in the bar afterwards, as well. I wish them all the best of luck with the rest of the performances and highly recommend anyone with an interest in HHG to grab a ticket if they can make it. You can pick them up from TicketSoup. It’s a bugger to find them on there so here’s a direct link.
[…] been moved about a bit mainly – I reckon – to reduce the show to a manageable length. The adaptation I saw a year or so ago by Strathclyde University drama group was superb but a little long at almost three […]