Wednesday 19 August 2009

Hitchhiker memory bank failure

Years ago I saw a stage production of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What a fun topic to write a nostalgic blog about, thought I yesterday. But, as I tried to pull a few memories together, I realised something shocking: my own interior version of Eddie the Shipboard Computer seems to have had its hard drive all but wiped clean!

So this post has become something of a plea. Who can remember a low-budget UK touring production of HHG2G from somewhere around 1980? Andy Wicks and I saw it at the Poole Arts Centre (now known as The Lighthouse). We've pooled our failing memories of what was actually a great night out and come up with the following:

– Northen accents were apparent in the cast. There's a vague connection in my head with the Hull Truck Theatre Company, but that could be erroneous, especially as there's nothing on their website about them ever staging HHG2G. I also suspect Ken Campbell's name may have appeared somewhere on the programme, but I'm not sure he ever staged the showoutside London's West End, so again that could be a red herring.
– Free 'space sweets' were handed out before the performance.
– During the poetry appreciation scene, Arthur and Ford ran out to sit in the audience (right next to me in fact) to scream at the Vogon verse.
– The show may have started with a Deep Thought scene
– The falling whale scene was visuallised with animation and voiced by a man on a ladder!
– There was lots of smoke.
– It was a whole heap of hoopiness!

It's appalling how little I remember about this show. So I've no choice but to send this request out across the world – if you know what the hell I'm talking about, please comment on this post! In the meantime, I'm off to defragment my frontal lobe in the hope of undeleting a few critical files.

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