Great Expectations at Keswick Theatre

IT is Charles Dickens' 200th birthday this year so it's fitting that Theatre by the Lake at Keswick marks the event.
They've chosen to do so with a fresh and exciting adaptation of Great Expectations. Neil Bartlett is the contemporary writer who takes this much-loved book  and shows that it still has the ability to shock, amaze and entertain.
From the start, the audience is made aware this is going to be no poor photocopy of either the book or the David Lean film. A dramatic set consisting of seemingly endless doors fills the stage and a 'Greek chorus' of actors follow Pip (George Banks) on his adventures.
We begin, of course, with Pip's childhood encounter with escaped convict Magwitch - played magnificently by James Duke. And the other 'star' of the story is jilted bride, Miss Havisham - given a sharp portrayal by Maggie Tagney.
And throughout the rest of Pip's journey we renew our acquaintance with some of Dickens' most curious and most colourful characters.
Zoe Mills pitches the complex Estella just right and Chris Hannon (Joe Gargery), Nicholas Goode (Herbert Pocket) and Adrian Metcalfe (Pumblechook) ground the Dickensian cavalcade in enough realism to bring the characters back to life.
The script is also dusted off and made presentable for today's audiences. At times undeniably Dickens in sentiment and humour but also strikingly modern; some scenes are almost entirely acted out in the third person.
Minimalist lighting and staging courtesy of director Ian Forrest and lighting designer Nick Beadle leave the audience to fill in the gaps with their own imagination.
Theatre needs to challenge and this richly-coloured tale lends itself to being presented in many different ways. God forbid theatre simply re-tells the story without looking at the subject matter anew. This is a top-class production and a definite must-see for lovers of both Dickens and good theatre.
Great Expectations runs at Keswick's Theatre by The Lake until November 10. Box office: 017687 74411.

Fairies left homeless by floods

One of the fairy houses at Gelt Woods
 - the sign says 'Home Sweet Home'

THE latest victims of this year's summer floods are the fairies of Gelt Woods. The woods near Brampton in Cumbria have been home to the fairies for at least four years when their houses were first spotted in the roots of trees and along the river bank (The precise location is kept secret to avoid human neighbours being disturbed by thousands of fairy-loving tourists). Each summer since 2009 the fairies have returned and this year was no exception. However, following the torrential rain of June the River Gelt burst its banks and has washed away at least two of the fairy houses. It's not believed any fairies lost their lives in the tragedy. Fairies, it seems, like to live by water but some just built their homes perilously close to the Gelt. Wiser fairies built further up the hillside and one enterprising fairy built her home in a tree.


There are some people - cynical unromantic humans - who suggest it is a local artist who puts the fairy houses there each summer. And removes them in the winter for fear of frost damaging them. Children and fairy lovers know better.

A fairy door to a fairy house

Whoever or whatever is responsible, they provide some simple pleasure to children (and adults) in an age where most children rely on TVs, Wiis, video games and other technology for their fun. Grandparents in particular are known to dare to turn off computers and take their grandchildren for a walk through the woods. And just as the kids are crying out 'Boring' or 'Can we go home now', have pointed out some brightly-coloured object in the distance. The children then discover for themselves the strange, mystical world of the Gelt Woods fairies.


There can be a dozen or more fairy houses in the woods but, to be honest, it's difficult to count because some of them are remarkably well camouflaged. Some of the houses have signs such as 'Home Sweet Home' above the door. And others have fairy boots placed on the doorstep. It's also possible to find tiny wheelbarrows, garden seats, baskets and other fairy furniture beside the houses.


Remarkably, the doors are never stolen or even damaged - even though they are visible all summer. Indeed, when a mischievous Jack Frost has broken off a door handle or letterbox, it's placed carefully beside the door for the fairies to find and hopefully repair.


Children have been known to leave gifts for the fairies: sweets, flowers and gold-paper stars seem to be the most well-received presents. And some children have even left letters for the fairies - though I'm not aware of anyone yet receiving a reply.

Hiker Lesley Park finds one fairy sensibly built her house
high up in a tree and so avoided the floods

Cumbria has always been a popular haunt for the little folk. In Coniston, the fairies helped the copper miners with their work. In Whitehaven, fairies lived on a rocky outcrop just south of the coastal town and danced at annual fair at Fleswick Bay. Fairies were also known to live beside Bassenthwaite Lake but their homes were sadly lost with the building of the A66. In Little Langdale the fairies have been happy to share the cottages owned by local people and pay their 'rent' by performing little duties around the house, or leaving fairy butter in the woods nearby. It's a county where humans and fairies have lived happily alongside each other for centuries so the news of the flooding is likely to be a cause of much concern. It's hoped the fairies soon rebuild their homes - but a little further away from the river this time.

• Quick plug: My hand-bound book, Fairies of Cumbria, covers the Gelt Woods fairies and many other Cumbrian fairy legends. It is available for £4.99 as a 'real' book or £2.04 as an ebook (yes, sorry about that odd 4p - I'm not sure why that appeared!). See my online bookstore for more information.

How to write a bloody amazing book review

The perfect review: A smile that tells you all you need to
know about the book

THE question of how to write a book review arose after I saw some advice on the internet. Advice that was followed by messages from many people who had obviously found the guidance useful. It consisted of such things as:

• Sometimes you will need to include background to enable reader(s) to place the book into a specific context. For example, you might want to describe the general problem the book addresses or earlier work the author or others have done. 
• For a nonfiction book, provide an overview, including paraphrases and quotations, of the book's thesis and primary supporting points.
• For a work of fiction, briefly review the story line for readers, being careful not to give away anything that would lessen the suspense for readers. 
• Describe the book: Is it interesting, memorable, entertaining, instructive? Why?
• Respond to the author's opinions: What do you agree with? And why? What do you disagree with? And why?

And by this point I had nodded off. It struck me as tedious and as dull as the book reviews that would inevitably be produced by following such advice. So it got me thinking: How do you write a good book review and what's the purpose of a review anyway?

Bob Monkhouse's autobiography was reviewed in the East Anglian Daily Times in just four words: "Poor choice of subject".

"To tell people what you think of the book" I hear you say. But since most critics are unknown - and their opinion therefore worthless - that can't be a complete answer.


"To tell me briefly what the book is about so I can decide if I might buy it". But a synopsis (and now sample pages) are available on Amazon or the back cover of the book. 


So it still leaves that basic question unanswered: What is the point of a book review? It may remain unanswered for the moment but I'd suggest the review is more than just summarising the book and giving your views on it. For many critics a review is a 'clothes peg' on which personal views and thoughts can be hung - and for that reason knowing something about the critic and his background can be helpful.

Then I discovered ralphmag.org - an American website with some radical book reviews. A breath of fresh air in a world full of mind-numbingly, boring book reviews. And they included their own advice on writing a review - advice which should be shared with a wider audience. Enjoy...

• The text of the review should be written with simplicity and dignity, using the King's English. Avoid dangling participles, pretentious sentences, and show-off words. Be insightful, witty, reasoned, literate, and pithy. In all cases do not, repeat, do not put the editors to sleep with your words.
• We cannot tell you how long to make your review...that has to be a matter between you and the page, if not god.
• Our take on most book reviewers --- especially experienced ones --- is that they don't realize that the Standard, Reasoned, Thoughtful, Careful Book Review isn't worth reading; much less posting for the world to read.
• We want reviews that expose pomposity and arrogance and foolish pride, that expose the lack of grand writing and great plotting. We want our writers to scorn predictability and ridicule the turgid and the bombastic.
• At the same time, this is not a mere seek-and-destroy mission. We want reviews that praise the true artist --- lauding the known and the unknown with equal fervor. We want our reviewers to search out honest, rich and insightful literature --- to describe it with words that are, in themselves, art.
• To see how not to write, study the book review sections of most U. S. dailies. After some time, you will see that their reviewers are scared of something: perhaps, of being original, or alive, or funny...or, at best, being smart-ass.

Amen to all that.

A surprising and astonishing book

Sold For A Farthing - Clare Kipps
Published 1953 by Frederick Muller Ltd

MY top ten books of all time include the predictable mix of the worthy (Plato's The Last Days of Socrates), the classic (Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit) and the personal (The Green Stone by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman). But following a discovery a few days ago I can now include the unexpected: Sold For A Farthing by Clare Kipps.


It is only 72 pages long. It was written by a non-professional writer. And it tells the story of a sparrow. 


Clare Kipps was an Air Raid Warden in London. In July 1940 she returned home to find on her doorstep a day-old sparrow which, miraculously, responded to her nursing. It had, however, a deformed wing which meant it stayed the rest of its life in Clare's home. The sparrow - Clarence - became tame. So tame, in fact, that Clare was able to take it on her rounds in London's East End. Children (and adults) sitting huddled together in fear of Hitler's bombing campaigns immediately burst into smiles when they realised their Air Raid Warden brought with her a pet sparrow - a sparrow happy to perform a programme of 'tricks'.


It is this backdrop of World War II which makes this story so poignant. While men were slaughtering each other by the millions, Clare and her friends do all they can to save, and care for, one sparrow. The title - Sold For A Farthing - is a Biblical reference: that if God cares for a sparrow that you can buy for a farthing, then how much more must he care for you. The irony isn't lost on Clare.


On its most basic level, this is a simple touching tale of a woman caring for a sick sparrow. And the book can be enjoyed if read only as that (there are even photos of Clarence performing some of his tricks). Just as you can enjoy Jonathan Livingstone Seagull as a story about a seagull. But there are deeper questions here for those who care to ask them.


For example, there's a quote at the start from CS Lewis about whether it is man's duty to tame animals, rather than leave them in a 'wild' state. Clare (a widow) says Clarence was not a pet. Rather that they shared an intimate friendship (he often 'nested' in her bed with her). By the end of the book she is writing "This little person - for it becomes increasingly difficult to me to think of him as a mere bird...". But does the sparrow become more human, or does she become more 'mother hen'.  What are we to make of this:


"After breakfast (if the siren allowed) came the morning scrap. The bed would be cleared for action and I would sit at one end and the sparrow, looking like a miniature eagle, at the other. Then he would rush at me, tail spread and wings outstretched, and hold down my hand with one tiny claw while he hammered it with his beak like a miner with a pickaxe. He would then retreat only to return in fury to the attack - pecking, pinching, tumbling and scolding as the wild sparrows do in the hedgerows. But when I said sternly 'Now, now! That's enough!" he would simmer down and flutter his fan until his fed."


To protect her eyes during these mock fights she took to wearing goggles.


Clarence and Clare have their share of adventures on the way. The house is bombed (he survives), they are caught in a bomb raid while out at night and on one occasion a cat gets into Clarence's room. Clare's inexperience as a writer does mean she glosses over these. So, infuriatingly she says at the start of Chapter Five: "There is little of interest to record in the life of my sparrow from the end of his sixth year until his serious illness and partial recovery in his twelfth."! But it is perhaps for the best that the publisher didn't rush round a ghost-writer and Clare's matter-of-fact style allows this story to be told simply and starkly. That said, you'll no doubt be shedding a tear or two at Clarence's death. He lived 12 years (most text books will tell you the life expectancy of a sparrow is three years) and the bird-lover/scientist will no doubt find much of interest in this diary.


The lover of mysticism or the supernatural may also find something in this book. Such as this throwaway line in the Prologue:


"When I was born, a magpie pecked three times on the window as the nurse announced that a puny and significant infant was a girl.  My mother took it as an ill omen - for she had a strange horror of magpies - and she died within three days. But neither magpie nor raven has ever been to me a harbinger of sorrow. I have had friends among the wild songsters and have been on nodding terms with a nightingale, but no bird has ever been so constant and beloved a companion as my little house sparrow."


And there's a spine-chilling coincidence towards the end of the sparrow's life when Clare asks a photographer to take some pictures of her feathered friend. She randomly pulls a book off the shelf and opens it for the sparrow to be pictured 'reading'. Only when the photo is developed and printed does she realise that the book (of religious scripture) is open at a page that says: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father knowing?"


Make of that what you will.


Clare was a friend of the poet and author Walter de la Mare and he encouraged her to write an account of Clarence. It was published in 1953 and became a minor sensation. The book appears to have been rarely out of print until the Seventies. And while it may be out of print now, second-hand copies are easily obtained. I urge you to get hold of one. Dickens it ain't. But it is without doubt a most remarkable book.

Health and safety gone mad

Yes, they are full face goggles and hard hats the scouts are wearing!

I JUST had to share this picture from the front page of this week's Keswick Reminder. It shows scouts lighting a Jubilee Beacon but some buffoon in health and safety has insisted they wear hard hats and full-face goggles! Despite that it appears as if the boy's arm on the left is on fire. Somewhat unsurprisingly, The Keswick Reminder didn't think following up the 'health and safety angle' and ran the story straight.

A warm production of Colder Than Here

YES, it’s about dying. But no, it’s not a depressing night at the theatre.
Colder Than Here is a gentle, heart-warming look at a family struggling with the terminal cancer of their mother, Myra (Maggie Tagney).
Playwright Laura Wade was in the audience on the first night and I can’t believe she was anything but delighted by this first regional performance of her play.
Freelance director Abigail Anderson used the deftest of touches to show a natural and realistic portrayal of a family brought together by the impending death.
Daughters Jenna (Augustina Seymour) and Harriet (Joannah Tincey) rediscover their sibling love for each during the months of planning for a fitting funeral for their mother.
And ‘distant’ husband Alec (Philip Rham) finds some measure of reunion with his wife as well.
It’s through a mix of humour and pathos that Laura Wade keeps the audience intrigued and, at times, entertained by the progress towards Myra’s final days. A cardboard coffin is the focus for many giggles as Myra considers a natural burial. Just as the characters are forced to deal with the self-assembly coffin sat in the middle of the lounge so they are also forced to deal with the many issues that have pushed the family apart.
It’s a lovely and surprisingly reassuring night of theatre.
Colder Than Here runs at Keswick Theatre until November 9. Phone 017687 74411  to book or visit www.theatrebythelake.co.uk.

Dry Rot  - Sadly, just not funny enough

COMEDY is difficult to pull-off on stage. Farce is darn near impossible. It’s the downfall of many an over-optimistic amateur theatre company and now even Keswick Theatre appears to be struggling with this genre. 
Dry Rot was written 60 years ago by John Chapman and a dated script proves a handicap for the players before they even start but it shouldn’t in itself prove fatal. 
Indeed, the actors give a slick and reasonably fast-moving performance. But the occasional chuckle was the best achieved during this performance 
The direction by Ian Forrest seemed unimaginative. The comic action (relying on characters getting their foot stuck in the dry rot of the staircase, trousers falling down and the usual misunderstandings) appeared as tired and dated as the script. 
It is at least tame enough to make it a family show, and there were plenty of younger audience-goers. But these are youngsters used to the sharp, edgy and sometimes vicious humour of CBBC – it was clear that getting a foot stuck in a floorboard was just not going to cut it. 
Mr Forrest and other directors at Keswick have often turned dull patches of script into something remarkable thanks to clever direction and novel bits of theatre but for the most part these are all missing in Dry Rot. And it’s not been that long since they turned the ‘dated’ script of Arsenic and Old Lace into a modern-day hit.
 Whole scenes (practising riding a horse on the back of a couch, drinking afternoon tea) ramble on for several minutes with every attempt at eliciting a laugh falling on deaf ears. 
At times the show did start to kick into action. When the Frenchman Polignac (Adrian Metcalfe) comes on stage the laughs start to flow. Perhaps it’s the natural delivery (as opposed to the over-the-top shouting the cast generally rely on) which makes it work. Similarly the genuine confusion between the landlord Colonel Wagstaff (Stephen Aintree) and landlady (Nicky Goldie) over a piano is delivered dead-pan and produces some good giggles. 
It’s hard as a reviewer to gauge whether it’s just you – the critic – having a bad night. And to be fair, there did seem to be some in the audience enjoying much of the show. But I suspect the majority were disappointed by this lack-lustre and often unfunny farce. 
Keswick Theatre aren’t afraid to change and adapt shows as they continue their run through the summer and I suspect  (and hope) that when others go to see the show it will have improved markedly (feel free to comment below and let me know). 

•  Dry Rot runs until November 9. Phone 017687 74411 or visit www.theatrebythelake.co.uk.