[2015046] A Hip Hikers Guide To The Galaxy
Backwards Anorak @ Tuxedo Cat – Mayall Room
7:15pm, Thu 19 Feb 2015
I’m the first punter in a pretty-full audience to enter the Mayall Room, and as soon as I see two people already sitting at either end of the front row I know that they’re plants for the show. I sit next to one of them and attempt to engage in small-talk; that did not go well, either because of her laser-like focus on the performance to come, or the fact that I was twice as old as everyone else in the room.
Opening with an embarrassingly self-unaware dance number, A Hip Hikers Guide is (surprisingly) an unrequited love story, featuring Prince Harian on a galactic quest to find a wife, whilst his doting slave-girl Minge tags along. There’s a bunch of songs (it was really cathartic to be part of the audience ensemble singing “Fuck off, Minge”), some really juvenile humour, and – yes – the two “audience” members who were in the room early were called onstage as indicative hipsters for the “Fuck Off, It’s My Time” song… which seemed apt.
There was something that really rubbed me the wrong way with A Hip Hikers Guide; maybe it was the costuming, which seemed to be a hipster sneer at the fashion of my beloved eighties. Or maybe it was the smutty (in a bad way) dialogue that seemed to be written for fifteen-year old boys. Or maybe it was the casual don’t-give-a-fuck-oh-maybe-I-really-do pretentiousness of the production…
Look – it’s fair to say that I was not the target audience for this show. It’s also fair to say that I really didn’t enjoy it all that much. But I’ll happily acknowledge that there was an almost belligerent confidence to its delivery that suggests that the Backwards Anorak team are delivering exactly what they want… I just don’t think that I’m interested in that show.
(46) A Hip Hikers Guide To The Galaxy: Peppy and confident. I left more bemused than I entered, so that's good. #ff2015 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 19, 2015