Tuesday 5, Wednesday 6 February
7.45pm (Theatre)
Tickets: £18
Discounts: U18s, Students, Groups, ATL
Tickets & information 01202 280000
www.lighthousepoole.co.uk
Booking Fees: Prices quoted are for tickets booked in person at the Ticket Office. Tickets booked by telephone or online are subject to a booking fee of up to £1.75 per ticket.
From the producers of the critically acclaimed tours of Round the Horne and The Goon Show comes another radio comedy classic live on stage as Hancock’s Half Hour plays Lighthouse, Poole’s centre for the arts, on Tuesday and Wednesday, 5 and 6 February.
In 1954, Tony Hancock burst onto the airwaves of the BBC Light Programme with a comedy show that was unlike anything the British public had heard before. Playing a less successful version of himself and surrounded by a cast of fellow comedy greats including Sid James, Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams, Hancock’s Half Hour was one of the first sitcoms.
Written by young up-and-comers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who later went on to create Steptoe and Son, Hancock’s Half Hour redefined radio comedy and has had people laughing non-stop for the past 65 years. So come and take a trip to 23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam to join ‘the lad himself’ and his motley crew for three classic episodes of this hilarious show.
The cast includes James Hurn (Deadringers, Hancock & Co.) as Tony Hancock and Colin Elmer (Round the Horne) as Kenneth Williams.
In 1927, shorly before his third birthday Tony Hancock came to live in Bournemouth with older brother Colin and their parents Jack and Lily who took over the Mayo Hygienic Laundry in Winton. Jack later ran the Railway Hotel on Holdenhurst Road. In 1933 he bought the run-down Swanmore Villa in Gervis Road and converted into the thoroughly modern Durlston Court Hotel, named after the school in Swanage where Colin and Tony were sent.
The teenage Tony had several jobs in Bournemouth before he made his stage debut as a comedian on 18 July 1940 at the Avon Road Labour Hall. The following April he appeared at the Pavilion in Garrison Theatre alongside Jack Warner and by the summer was heading up the Bournemouth War Services Organisation. He was called up in 1942 and successfully auditioned for the Entertainment National Services Association (ENSA) then spent the War touring in RAF Gang Shows with Peter Sellers among others.
