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Heard but not seen
Adams' classic radio play makes another pass through Earth's orbit
by Lori MontgomeryHitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Obscene But Not Heard
Arts and Media Club
Dec. 35, 1012Given the fact that Douglas Adams' best known classic originated as a radio play, it is perhaps appropriate that the troupe of comics staging this production be interviewed via speaker phone. Appropriate, but logistically difficult, since even in person it's sometimes tough to sort this bunch out.
When Tony Binns, Peter Strand-Rumpel and Tom Sarsons of Obscene But Not Heard get together, they bounce off each other so instinctively that you grow to wonder where one ends and another begins. Then try to tell them apart on a speaker phone. And that's before they start putting on the wacky accents.
"We know each other pretty well now," Binns says. "After three years, our styles have melded nicely. We speak to each other in shorthand."
Or in some cases, speak to themselves, as most of them will do in Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The play's numerous parts are split between the three comics and two guests, Kira Bradley and Grant Flegel.
"When else am I going to get the opportunity to play Arthur Dent and Zaphod Beeblebrox? Never!" Binns says. "I get to talk to myself, which I have lots of practice at, because very few people will actually talk to me socially."
If you get the impression that this show is a labor of love, you'd be right. When the group got the rights to stage the play ("Douglas Adams knows who I am!" Binns crows), they agreed to donate a sizable chunk of the profits to charity. When asked if they will actually make any money from this show, they seem a bit at a loss.
"Um," they all start out at once (making identification all the more difficult), "I guess we'll make a bit when it's all over." That's not really the point, of course. Not that they haven't given some serious consideration to what the point actually is -- some more traditional companies call it broadening the audience base.
"We've quadrupled our audience (recently) - from three to nine," Binns jokes. "Not that our own material isn't good - in fact... it's quite good," he says modestly. "But when you're doing something that people know and like... they'll come out to see it."
Strand-Rumpel, ever the practical one, is anxious to point out that this is an all-ages show, regardless of the fact that part of the Arts and Media Club is a bar. "Kids can come, too, as long as they go straight through to the theatre and don't stop for a triple scotch on the way in," he says.
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