Riverside Studios

Having begun life as a whimsical jape in a Sydney bar, The Empire Strips Back is indeed a Star Wars-themed bulesque show that takes up residence at Riverside Studios for a walloping three-and-a-half months. We’re not entirely clear if it’s simply pitching to the horny nerd market or if there’s a bit more to it than that. But if your main takeaway from the original trilogy was the Princess Leia bikini scene the you’re definitely in luck.

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.