Cox and Hadfield coming to Sydney. Can there be too much?
Professor Brian Cox and astronaut Chris Hadfield are bringing their shows back to Sydney.
They are both very cool people with a love of science and a gift for presentation. Their shows, that I’ve seen, have been fun and interesting. But I can’t help but feel that it’d be nice to see something new rather than the same very expensive names on high rinse and repeat cycles. I feel churlish even daring to write that, but there you go. I’ve been to, and loved, many of Professor Cox’s shows over the last few years but the two very noticeable features for me have been that the show started seeming like I’d seen it before (the danger when it’s all about one man talking) and the price started shooting towards the stars.
Anyway, with rant now over, Cox’s show is billed as “Direct from Europe, the planet’s most momentous science show.” The sell-out show in Europe apparently broke records.
The massive screens of this show do justice to the astonishing images of the universe from the Hubble Space Telescope and spacecraft like the Cassini orbit around Saturn. The success of the tour in the UK and Europe also means that 150,000 people were interested enough in physics to come and watch a live show about it, and that’s an encouraging thought for the future!
It’s certainly encouraging for those making hay on the back of the extremely expensive tickets (see I can’t help myself). If you subscribe to Lateral Events, the people behind the shows, you can get pre-sale tickets from 2pm this afternoon.
Chris Hadfield arrives in three weeks. His tickets are available for booking here.
By the way, it’s sort of interesting that geeky shows have hit the point when scalping is a serious problem. The Lateral Events site mentions scalping and I had a call during the week complaining about Minecraft YouTube maven TDM’s Sydney show which saw the tickets all snapped up within moments of becoming available and now being resold at significant premiums. Sadly it seems that geeky shows have hit prime-time with popularity leading to expensive tickets and the attendant black-market. I guess that’s a measure of success.
Thank you Evan for showing us that the Emperor is wearing the same outfit. And why not, he comes from a pop music background and all good bands know that to please the crowd you just have to plan all the favourites. Look at how successful U2’s Joshua Tree Tour has been this year. It’s a challenge for this new type of entertainment to meet the demand for interesting and informative entertainment. Hopefully the industry can rise to the challenge.