Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf
Toby Hadoke's one-man show[*] - all ninety-plus minutes of it, together with twenty minutes of his hiding behind a sofa as the audience go in - has a serious claim to be one of the most affecting pieces of theatre I've ever experienced. Toby's approach was lightly self-deprecating in the way that it expressed the long suffering of himself-as-fan at school, at university and in the adult world, and while none of the experiences was precisely the same as mine, it appeared that he'd captured so much of what I'd felt while growing up at a time when Doctor Who was drifting out of popularity. The 1980s were not a good time to be a Doctor Who fan - though I'd not picked on Telly Addicts, presented by the then-ubiquitous Noel Edmonds, as the turning point when television's past came to be seen not as part of a heroic series of experiments, but as something to be sneered at. The way in which a particular strain of Doctor Who fan doesn't see the appeal of Star Wars or Star Trek - and that's been me at various times - was powerfully done (the use of the EastEnders theme music means that it will be forever associated with one scene in The Empire Strikes Back) though Doctor Who is and has been as open to some of the charges Hadoke levels against the other franchises (a word that seems wrong in this context). A pity that his Oxford date was at the height of the exam season - I'd certainly attend again, as there is no doubt that Toby's young son's discovery of the series (again, I was reminded of watching Utopia with my cousin's son, or of watching New Earth puzzle another cousin's son with the moral ambiguity of the feline medical order) will provide more material.
[*] apart from a few recorded introductions or interjections from a well-known time-and-spacefaring actor.
[*] apart from a few recorded introductions or interjections from a well-known time-and-spacefaring actor.