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? My friend 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:
- 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 show outside 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 visualised with animation and voiced by a man on a ladder
- There was a lot 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.
Update
Since writing this post, Andy has solved the mystery. The show we saw was Clwyd Theatr Cymru’s version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, adapted for the stage by Jonathan Petheridge. It toured Wales between 15 January and 23 February, 1980, before being revived for a tour of UK theatres the following year. It played at the Poole Arts Centre between 17-21 November, 1981.
Graham Edwards 