Royal Court's Hitchhiker's Guide to Fazakerley

Christmas – a time for forgiving and forgetting, and at least one of those applies at the Royal Court, where patience finally snapped with no-show star David Gest last week and lawsuits are now a possibility*.Never mind all that - on to the next thing! And that is the announcement of next year’s festive show at the venue, the quite wonderfully-named The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fazakerley. It opens on November 22 next year, and tickets are, unbelievably, already on sale.Once more it will be written by Fred Lawless, returning for his fifth consecutive Royal Court Christmas production.They say: “Four things we can guarantee with this show.... 1) It'll have great songs. 2) It'll have a brilliant cast. 3) The gags will be delivered like machine gun fire. 4) There'll be no gags about Uranus (er... sorry, we lied about No 4).“Expect Trekkies and trackies, Wookies and wools, aliens and Wirraliens. Beam me up Scotty Road!”For those who haven’t yet had their fix of this year’s show, A Nightmare on Lime Street (see the MADEUP review here), it has, as we’ve come to expect - and despite the shenanigans of its supposed star Gest - had its run extended by a further 13 performances and will now finish on January 26, 2013.So if you're a last minute type or so organised you're already sorting out next Christmas, tickets and information for both are available from www.royalcourtliverpool.com or on 0870 787 1866.* After Gest cancelled his run of Soul Spectacular shows scheduled for February 2013 on top of everything else**, the theatre announced last week that it is currently taking legal advice, saying “we are very disappointed to lose the show, especially following David’s recent withdrawal from the Christmas show. We will be contacting customers as quickly as we can to arrange full refunds.”** Gest missed the first two weeks of Nightmare on Lime Street due to gastroenteritis, then cancelled the rest of his appearances, including a charity gala night to which he’d supposedly invited showbiz chums including the Jackson family, to fly to Memphis to have a benign tumour removed - but not before appearing at a charity do held in his honour at the Sefton Park Palm House, on a night he should have been performing, but the Royal Court previously let him off.