Riverside Studios

This ’60s-set drama from playwright Sarah Shelton followes the Deacon family, and mariarch Dorie’s determination to keep them respectacle nio matter what. It stars Minder actor Gary Webster. alongside the professional stage debut from his son, Freddie. 

Hammersmith arts centre Riverside Studios is going all out for Black History Month this year, with a line-up that spans films, community creative workshops, and spotlight evenings. The programme includes Charles Burnett’s unsettling 1977 debut Killer of Sheep (October 26-30), a landmark of independent Black cinema that follows a slaughterhouse worker as he battles exhaustion and finds fleeting moments of joy. Boris Lojkine’s recent film Souleymane’s Story (October 25-28) follows a Guinean asylum seeker as he rides his bike through the streets of Paris, delivering food and awaiting an official decision. There's also a scratch night (October 6; November 3) for emerging theatremakers and writers, as well as a work-in-progress showing of immersive experience Doubles (October 11), which follows two Grenadians navigating the British class system. The program is rounded out with djembe drumming workshops for both kids and adults (October 11-12).

The years have done little to dim Douglas Adams’s genius sci-fi comedy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But it’s been a while since there any sort of major adaptation of the intergalactic adventures of hapless last surviving human Arthur Dent and his eccentric alien pals: a big budget 2005 film adaptation was too Americanised and didn’t really work; a proposed Hulu TV series failed to materialise, possibly due to the pandemic.  This stage adaptation isn’t going to have quite the same reach, but it is, nonethless, an admirably ambitious sounding work of immersive theatre that will take over Riverside Studios’ Studio 2, Studio 3 and points inbetween. It’s created by Arvind Ethan David, a writer-producer who has previous with Adams’s work: he first adapted Adams’s other big book series Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for stage as an 18-year-old. He ended up working for Adams for a spell, and would go on to adapt the books into another play, and a successful TV series.  An immersive Hitchhiker’s Guide is a slightly nerve-wracking proposition: there is the worry new content or even in character improv will be added to Adams’ essentially perfect creation. But done right, it could be out of this world. There are between three and six start times per day – see official website for full details.