Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Live in Concert (1995)

The synopsis begins with: "On a hot night in August 1995, Douglas Adams gave a barnstorming performance to an invited audience at the Almeida Theatre in London." This audiobook is a recording of this performance. I loved hearing the author dramatically reading excerpts from his Hitchhiker's series. He reads selections from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and Life, the Universe and Everything. Fabulous.

 

Rather than beginning where the book does, with Arthur Dent facing his home being destroyed to make way for a bypass and being rescued by Ford Prefect, right before the Earth is destroyed to make way for a galactic bypass, Adams begins with Life, the Universe and Everything. Arthur is stranded back on Cenozoic Earth, "in the middle of Islington and there wasn't a bus due for 2 million years." He'd been stranded "as a result of a complex sequence of events which had involved him being alternately blown up and insulted in more bizarre regions of the galaxy than he'd ever dreamt existed."

Adams explains: "Now, the running order is rather complicated because the story of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is insanely complicated anyway, and I've sort of chopped and changed it around as much as possible for this evening, so you're really gonna have to concentrate." This, it seems, wasn't unusual for Adams. Wikipedia says, 

The broad narrative of Hitchhiker follows the misadventures of the last surviving man, Arthur Dent, following the demolition of the Earth by a Vogon constructor fleet to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Dent is rescued from Earth's destruction by Ford Prefect—a human-like alien writer for the eccentric, electronic travel guide The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy—by hitchhiking onto a passing Vogon spacecraft. Following his rescue, Dent explores the galaxy with Prefect and encounters Trillian, another human who had been taken from Earth (prior to its destruction) by the two-headed President of the Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox and the depressed Marvin, the Paranoid Android. Certain narrative details were changed among the various adaptations.

Adams goes on: "You're also going to have to concentrate because I'm not very good at accents. There are lots of different characters. I basically divide them into posh quiet, posh loud, less posh quiet and less posh loud and Australian." This is one of the reasons why I love Adams - his wry sense of humor.

I stumbled across this recording when I was looking for an audio recording of the book. It was great being able to hear Arthur and Ford speak with the author's own voice, hearing Adams's inflections and intonations. I was introduced to the series through PBS - at least I think it was PBS - showing the 1981 BBC television series starring Simon Jones as Arthur Dent and David Dixon as Ford Prefect. It's narrated by Peter Jones. I fell in love with it from the beginning; the Guide's entries made the story for me. But it took me several decades before I read the books. (I own a copy of the series and still love it for all its ancient computer graphics and really terrible special effects - Zaphod Beeblebrox's 2nd head, anyone?)

Since this *isn't* a straight reading of Hitchhiker's, it's only 1 hour and 38 minutes long. But it is a really enjoyable 1 hour and 38 minutes. (It would have probably been about 1hour 36 minutes long, but there are some long pauses that Adams makes at the end of paragraphs. There were a couple of times I checked my phone to make sure the book hadn't accidentally turned off.)

I'm giving it 4.5/5 - great fun but too short!