the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy radio show live!, theatre royal, glasgow

Arts Editor

Monday 11 June 2012

The number of formats in which the masterpiece of comic writing by the late Douglas Adams has been reincarnated must now surely have challenged the lust for lucre of even the most avaricious publishing empire in the universe, so after the books, the discs, the television show and the movie, a return to the original radio scripts with many of the original cast was something to gladden the hearts of every fan.

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keith bruce

On the evidence of the whoops of recognition that greeted the cast and characters at this premier, they will not be disappointed either. Simon Jones is Arthur Dent and Mark Wing-Davey is Zaphod Beeblebrox and all is still weird in the universe. The first half of the show is a sequence of the greatest set pieces of the original radio series as the Earth is demolished, the bemused Arthur and his alien pal Ford hop improbably aboard a couple of passing spacecraft, and getting a drinkable cup of tea is still one of the major difficulties in the cosmos.

But of course we are not in a BBC studio in Maida Vale over 40 years ago, so the script-in-hand performances are a bit of a gimmick (if the cast do not know the text off by heart, most of the audience do) and the hand-knitted sound effects are as often a token gesture as they are part of the performance, even if the "extras" who provide them, and fill roles as obliging doors and bemused whales and penguins, are often as funny as the principals. Obviously Jones has to be clad in a dressing gown as Arthur, but do we really need an extra head puppet for Zaphod – or a Revox-and-Bush-wireless manifestation of Marvin the paranoid android, come to that?Billy Boyd was cleverly aware of the clubbiness of the game as the narrator (and very funny in his extra role as "the meat") but it is where this show strays from The Book, especially after the interval, that this Guide falls apart.HHH

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the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy radio show live!, theatre royal, glasgow

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