h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Right. We´re sitting in the cinema waiting for the Monty Python show to start. Will reportlater. Expectations aren'tparticularly high

Bet she does, bet she does ... say no more

how did it work out for you, TC?
We got there dutifully just before 8pm, there were a few people in costume (mostly ministry of silly walks stuff) and anticipation was high. Sat through 30 minutes of filler ( ) - they came on stage and... BANG! the screen froze and that was it. They got it running again after 40 minutes but many people had left by then (including us)

very disappointing

No technical hitches. (This was Karlsruhe, the place is populated almost entirely by . )

The screening room was full - I nearly had to sit in the fourth row! (Luckily, though, we found two seats in a dark corner of the fourth row from the back) Audience were on great form, although practically no costumes. The pre-show half hour was fine - a quiz, a "behind the scenes" - some of Arlene Philips bossing people about (nicely) and having ideas. Oh - and that sketch with Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts being amazed that anyone would want to watch a bunch of old men doing the same as they had been doing in the sixties.

The show was a mix of live sketches and (during the scene changes) old footage, especially with Graham Chapman. The best bits were when they diverged from the script and practically just had private conversations, or openly lost their place and forgot their lines. You could tell they were doing this because they were either giggling or almost corpsing, and, anyway, the German subtitles didn't match what was being said as they were obviously based on the written script and had been pre-prepared.

They performed the old, worn out sketches with the right amount of silliness, off-handedness and self-irony.

The audience were surprisingly young. People of my generation you could have counted on the fingers of one hand. But, also, panning across the audience in the O2, there seemed to be quite a few young ones there, too. I went with my son, who enjoyed it, but had trouble keeping awake (with a 4-week-old baby, not surprising!)

I'm so sorry yours was spoilt, Sho - all in all, it wasn't fantastic, but it was slightly better than I expected, and I would have kicked myself if I hadn't seen it.

Oh and, of course, they finished with "Always look on the Bright Side" and it was moving to think that people all around the world were singing along simultaneously.

my mum watched it in Sheffield and had a whale of a time apparently, and my friends who were in the O2 arena said it was a brilliant atmosphere.

I'm sorry not to have seen it though - during the pre-show quiz it was very lively in our cinema.

oh and we were in the Düsseldorf medien hafen - plenty of there but a massive storm knocked everything sideways. That they got it back at all was a feat, but not worth watching just over half a show, the atmosphere was gone for me.

There was awed silence when Stephen Hawkings was on. Not so much Brian Cox who was on in the same sketch. Hawkings was in the audience - they showed him just after his sketch had been shown. Brian Cox was in the line-up on the stage at the end. You should have stayed, Sho!

I wouldn't have minded but after waiting 40 minutes, to get 20 minutes, then just the second half wasn't really on. ( has to get up at 4am - he'd have been ok if it was the whole thing but felt short changed, as did I, tbh)

But Brian Cox

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUOfi-8Op1c#t=54

BB

Did you get any refund, sho?

Oh yes they were pretty good in the face of a baying crowd - they refunded the full ticket price in cash (we paid in cash in person, most people had ordered online, I think they had their refund transferred back to their account) and we were told to keep the ticket as we can use that as a voucher to go and see a film (up to the end of the year)