The UK tour kicks off at London's Leicester Square Theatre next month before visiting Thame on September 29 and on October 17. Tony Hancock is best known for starring as Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock in Ray Galton and Alan Simpson's classic BBC sitcoms Hancock's Half Hour and Hancock. Trailblazing comedy Hancock's Half Hour began on radio 70 years ago this November and the small-screen version attracted audiences of 20 million.
Grimsby-born actor and playwright John Hewer has re-worked three lost television episodes of Hancock's Half Hour including The Auction, The Russian Prince and The Bequest and plays the lad himself in the Hambledon Productions stage show. "As a performer, you want to be meticulous," says Mr Hewer, a Tommy Cooper impersonator. "We cannot bring Tony, Sid, Hattie, Kenneth and Liz back to life, but we can honour their genius, and Ray and Alan's, with these affectionate revivals of these golden, ageless scripts, and, hopefully, extend the legacy to younger audiences and the next generation.
"There will always be a part of any individual performer which you cannot mask, and it would be unwise not to admit and accept that. The audiences are equally savvy. "However it's that shared mutual love that makes these revivals such a pleasure to both perform and to witness, and I'm extremely proud to be recreating Hancock, and bringing these particular episodes, lost from the archive, to life, for the very first time since the original broadcasts in 1956 and 1957.
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