"946" or G.I's at THE GLOBE by Penny Dolan

Today’s post is about a play – and a novel - for young people based on a historical event and performed at a historical place.
 

As soon as I saw that the Kneehigh Theatre Company was at The Globe on London’s South Bank in September, I checked dates and booked tickets. Although the Cornish-based company occasionally tours to Leeds, I wasn’t sure if that would happen with this show. So London it was. 

I particularly wanted to see how they would dramatise THE AMAZING STORY OF ADOLPHUS TIPS,a children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo, the author of WAR HORSE. The story is another “animal & war” tale, written in his classic, thoughtful style which was why I could not quite imagine how the story – and the history behind it - could be translated for the stage and for a family audience.

I had hopes: Kneehigh has a wonderfully theatrical approach. Although their performances feel emotionally real, what the audience sees is not realistic in the TV or CGI sense of the word: the company uses a cast of multi-talented actor-musicians in a variety of roles as well as puppetry, music, song, dance and movement and seem able to tread between from moments of raucous humour to intensely moving sensitivity.

“946: THE AMAZING STORY OF ADOLPHUS TIPS” is set during WWII. Ostensibly, the story is about a twelve year old girl trying to find her lost cat, yet it is also about the pity of war and the changes that war brings to ordinary lives and places. Michael Morpurgo, as ever, reminds us of the histories that one generation should share with those that come after. 

The inspiration for Morpurgo’s book was both the requisitioning of Slapton, a remote, rural village in Devon in1943 and the disaster that happened there. The military had noticed that the wide, sloping beaches of Slapton Sands were similar to the Normandy coastline and therefore chose that area to stage Operation Tiger, an intentionally realistic, don’t-turn-back rehearsal for the D-Day landings.

 

During the preparations, as American troops flooded into the area and landing craft gathered along the Devon coast, the local villagers had to make arrangements to leave the homes, farms, livestock and land and all that everything that had been part of their lives for generations. Even then, the rehearsal did not go well. When German U-boats were spotted in the Channel, a mismatch between the British and American coding systems blocked radio warnings and the landing ships, full of troops and sailors, heavy equipment and vehicles were torpedoed. Many men were maimed, killed or lost at sea and, furthermore, the “realistic” nature of Operation Tiger meant that the “live” ammunition was used when troops engaged on the beaches.

Afterwards, Morpurgo found, that although there had been local rumours of the disaster, a news black-out was imposed. Morale had to be kept high for the proposed D-Day landings and so the tragedy remained an official secret for many years, both in Britain and in America. The number chosen for the show’s title - 946 – is quoted as the number of G.I’s who died at Slapton Sands. A grim event, and I could not help wondering how Kneehigh would manage this uneasy subject.

A question asked of Bertholdt Brecht makes the opening line of the show:

“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?”
”Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”

Slowly, as a model farmhouse - complete with a smoking chimney - is carried on stage, we are shown a country backwater in miniature: a small Dorset farm, surrounded by tiny puppet sheep, a small black and white sheepdog and a delightful boy-puppet playing “keepy-uppy” with his football. In moments, that tiny scene expands to human scale. The small collie becomes a full-sized puppet collie, and we are inside the remote farmhouse with strong-minded Grandma, poorly Grandad in his wheelchair and, gradually all the family, especially Booey, the grandson and narrator. The grandfather is, very gently, dying. Grandma, clearly dominant, takes Booey out on a motorbike, recalling how she and her ailing husband used to travel, “Supreme!” she declares, a refrain that echoes throughout the play. Then, after the funeral, she announces she is setting off on a secret adventure, to do something she has waited until now to do.

If you have read any Morpurgo books, you will recognise his familiar time-slip structure when you see Grandma gives puzzled Booey her girlhood diary, briskly telling him that if he reads it – twelve-year-old Lily Tregenza’s diary - he will understand where she is going and why. As Booey starts reading the pages, time changes and Lily, played by Katy Owen, appears, furiously grabbing her diary out of his hands. 

A frisky self-willed young girl, Lily is obsessed with searching for her cat Tips who has been in hiding since Lily’s father drowned her litter of kittens. (This is a “told” incident, thank goodness.) Lily, unable to forgive her father, would not say goodbye when he left for war. 
Thankfully for my emotions, the puppet cat Tips is quite large and not particularly cute or needy: she is a typical farmhouse cat, in fact, and not one that anyone else on the Tregenza family farm worries about, because it is wartime and, short-handed, they are struggling to keep things going.
   
Lily attends the small village school, where lessons are now conducted by a teacher from France, the cruelly-nicknamed Madam Bloomers, who the “children” mock as she circles the stage on her bicycle. The “pupils” act their parts magnificently well, mixing naughtiness, name-calling and argy-bargy, along with acrobatically gliding around their old-school desks, and more. Even there, Lily does not change: she does not love school or rules and her liveliness and cussedness gives the play and story a nicely unsentimental edge.

Shortly, a group of evacuees arrive. Immediately, the cramped sharing of desks leads to arguments and fights between the village children and the incomers. They are, at first, instant enemies:

“They keep looking at us funny.”

“Well, look funny back!”

Gradually, Lily and Barry, a dim, kindly boy from war-damaged London, form an awkward relationship, with the headstrong Lily delighting in taunting the love-struck Barry throughout he play.

 
The whole “school cast” worked excellently, especially in a wonderfully raucous scene where Lily angrily suggests that Hitler and Churchill should settle the war between themselves rather than making everyone else fight the war for them, an idea demonstrated through a trio of children’s street games using rounds of scissors-paper-stone, a clapping pattern contest and a rather unequal skipping game at the end of which a Hitler figure is driven, snivelling, off-stage and a brash, triumphant Churchill celebrates with a tour-de-force on the skipping-rope.

Morpurgo was very involved with the Kneehigh Company’s adaptation, and I could not help noticing how subtly scripted the language was during these moments and the whole play. For example, the Nazi party is blamed, rather than the German nation as a whole, and although the children may be thoughtless, once they hear that their teacher’s husband has been drowned in a naval convoy, their behaviour immediately changes to sympathy, and for once the sight of school recorders brought peace and joy.

All the way through, the first half is full of activity and sound: the recorders sing tunefully, the tractor rattles around the stage, puppet hens squawk and small farm animals cause  havoc. Even the elusive Tips appears for a cuddle now and then.

However, the schoolchildren’s biggest surprise comes when Adie and his friend arrive in the classroom, asking for directions for their jeep: the children meet two black American soldiers, at a time and in a place where they would have been an unusual sight. Lily is totally enchanted by Adie, especially when the two G.I’s visit the Tregenza farm. 

Moreover, the soldier’s involvement, culture and cheerful friendship is emphasised all the way through by the music from the band on-stage, up in the gallery, descending to act their parts by ladders or skinning down the pole. 946 is full of “American” music - jazz, jitter-bug, gospel and more – and with never a single lute in sight.

 
I felt that the play is noisier and ruder than the original novel and once, rather mistook the book’s mood for me. When Barry’s larger-than-life bus-conductress mum visits the farm, her comic drag role rather overwhelmed the Ivy from the page, who I’d thought of as a helpful, extra pair of hands whose bustling ways had stirred the grandfather out of his mood of dejection. This book Ivy was hidden by the dramatically loud wails of protest about the awful green of her country surroundings. 

Yet, maybe the production needed that energy at that point, coming just before the imminent tragedy? As the second half starts to the sound of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, the stories start to interweave and darken and Kneehigh moves into the powerful arts of mime and symbolism:

- the stage, barricaded with lengths of wire, signifying the dangerous, restricted areas where Lily goes searching for Tips;

- the communication error is signified by two string-and-can phone-sets ( one colour British, the other American) the lines crossed but unconnected.

- an almost ritual acting out of the disaster, where G.I’s carry model ships forward to a rank of water-filled tin baths, like toys in the game of war.

- the fusillade of flashes and explosions and water spurting through the layers of mist and smoke: the fog of war indeed,

-  religious symbols: as the people leave the village, both the vicar’s church candlestick and the teacher’s menorah are carried among the precious possessions: this is not a one-faith confrontation.

- a tiny parachutist puppet descends; immediately an injured German parachutist stands on stage, hands in position but without a trailing parachute. The remote far-off is made immediate and personal

- the children and villagers holding out photos not only of the young German’s family but also the “lost” faces of British, Indian, Black, Jewish and other peoples who suffered in this World War

The production offers much to think about, not only the fact that life was changed for all in that community by those times. Lily’s “journal” concludes, ending with runaway Tips being brought home and the plot returns to the “present” of the early scenes. Where has Booey’s Gran gone? Who will look after her when she comes back? Who will the old lady live with? The squabbling family are waiting at the airport to find out . . .

Emma Rice’s production sharpened all the emotions and strengths of the Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips book, lightening it with humour and bringing sparkle and life to both the past and “present” stories, and there is much in this busy production that I would have liked to include but could not. You'll find a flavour of the show here.

 

However, at the same time, I was aware that The Globe was dressed for a twentieth-century war story. The familiar painted stage - see below - was stacked with sandbags or “protected” by wooden planking. Each pillar carried a large aeroplane propeller that whirred into action at significant moments, the music and sound was amplified and at one point a glitter-ball rotated under the Shakespearean canopy. This production meant a big change for The Globe, which was created to be as authentic an experience of Shakespearean theatre as possible, a theatre where costumes were laced and tied and where the great Round “O” would respond to the sound to human breath. Now – though not all in a single move - there are zips and electricity.

Emma Rice of Kneehigh is now the Director of the Globe so it will be interesting to see how Shakespeare will be played here in future. Her Midsummer Night’s Dream, recently shown on television, was much more in the vibrant, cross-dressing Kneehigh style than in the “authentically historic” tradition. Is this change a loss and if so, does it matter? Or is it a matter of “bums-on-seats” accountancy?

.

I will be seeing this production again. 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips is now on tour – maybe near you? - and will be coming to the West Yorkshire Playhouse during Book Week.  At this, a term-time matinee) I will probably witness the show among an audience of school-children. What they will make of it all? How much of the history will get though to them. And what will they make of all this “singing about the dark times?”

Penny Dolan

www.pennydolan.com

Meanwhile, as I have mentioned events in the North, places may still be available at next weekend's HARROGATE HISTORY FESTIVAL, held at THE OLD SWAN, where you can spend a day or three celebrating historical fiction.  Details here!

Beaux on the Stage

by Marie-Louise Jensen

I've always been fascinated by the phenomenon of men sitting on the stage during performances and disrupting the play, and read more about it when I researched my short story, A Night in the Theatre, for our History Girls anthology.
I'm very far from being an expert on the Restoration period and the theatre (though I would love to learn more) but I understood a few things much better from what I did read.
So how and why did the Restoration theatre-goers (and later) put up with fine bucks on the stage making a nuisance of themselves and disturbing the action?
I think the first thing to bear in mind was how different the stage was. It was much bigger and had a huge, wide apron that sloped down towards the audience. So there was more space for this practice than there would be now.
Secondly, going to the theatre was a more general entertainment experience than just watching the play. It was not generally considered to be a high point for drama. You went for the afternoon, you socialized, you showed off your new clothes, you ate and drank and there were even prostitutes on offer. Not just the actresses, though some of those fell into the trade too, as is general knowledge and no end of displaying of charms and intriguing went on in the dressing rooms, to which 'gentlemen' were admitted.
Often the men in the pit were so noisy that you couldn't hear the play, let alone the men on the stage itself. Sword fights regularly broke out and everyone else had to scramble for safety.
For many, the play itself was fairly incidental. But not for everyone, and audience grew steadily more annoyed.
In the 1700s, a dramatic satire, called Lethe by David Garrick, was performed at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. There is a wonderful dialogue about beaux on the stage from the point of view of one of them:

Aesop: How do you spend your evenings?
Fine Gentleman: I dress in the evening and go generally behind the scenes of both play-houses; not as you may imagine to be diverted with the play, but to intrigue and show myself - I stand upon the stage, talk loud and stare about, - which confounds the actors and disturbs the audience; upon which the galleries, who hate the appearance of one of us, begin to hiss and cry "off off!" while I, undaunted, stamp my foot, so, take snuff with my right hand and smile scornfully - thus. This exasperates the savages, and they attack with vollies of suck'd oranges and half-eaten pippins.
Aesop: And do you retire?
Fine Gentleman: Without doubt if I am sober - for orange will stain silk and an apple may disfigure a feature.

Garrick finally banished spectators from the stage in 1763 - not before time!

A BLOW-OUT IN A BREWERY by Penny Dolan

I enjoy map-reading but I remember my way by the visual geography. I watch for the line of the road, the building on a turn, the look of the street, a shop front or a tree.

More than a year ago, I went down to London, got off a bus near an ex-publishers ex-office and turned in what was the right direction. Suddenly I couldn’t recognise the place. Where had the landmarks gone?

That whole familiar corner of Tottenham Court  Road was a vast building site. 

I couldn’t spot Centrepoint’s fountain pool or turn left for Foyles. Behind the large PR-pasted hoardings, the legendary Astoria lay demolished. 

Only the Dominion Theatre, with its gigantic “We Will Rock You” statue, offered a fixed point in that altered place. 

Yet cities do change. What was there before the Dominion? As a writer, I like to search out the history of places and this is what I found. 

Back in 1814, this area was part of the Parish of St Giles, known for its dreadful poverty, squalor and deprivation as the Rookeries. At the corner of Tottenham Court Road stood the Horse Shoe Brewery, part of the brewing empire of Sir Henry Meaux. With the poor quality of London water, this must have been a busy and welcome industry. 

Inside the brewery was a vast vat: a wooden construction twenty-two feet high bound together by twenty-nine metal hoops. Constructed in 1785, at a cost £10,000, the vat was designed to hold 20,000 barrels of porter, a beer that needs months to mature.

Almost thirty years later, in 1814, the gigantic vat was full of fermenting porter and the evening must have seemed an ordinary one. 

However, at  6pm, one of the metal hoops snapped and the huge vat exploded, bringing down the others around it. The sound was so loud it was heard five miles away. 

Within moments, more than twelve hundred thousand litres of beer smashed through the brick wall of the brewery.

The beer swept in a flood through the surrounding slum of Saint Giles in a violent wave. It damaged buildings, totally demolished two houses and a pub in Great Russell Street, The dreadful torrent caused injury and death, especially to young children and destroyed both homes and livelihoods. Of course, as this liquid was beer, some of the injuries were caused by people rushing out with pans, pots and kettles to gather up beer for themselves and being caught up in the flood.

The disaster immediately attracted huge interest. Some of the locals exhibited the bodies of the drowned, charging for a viewing. The crowd inside one house was so big that it broke the floorboards and dropped the sightseers down into the still-flooded cellar. Before long, the police stepped in and closed all the gruesome exhibits. The funerals were paid for by coins placed on coffins by parishioners. 

The stench of the beer filled the district for many months. Eventually but not unsurprisingly, the Meaux Brewery Company was taken to court and the incident was judged an “Act of God”. The brewery gradually recovered and continued on the same site until its demolition in October 1922. 

Did those who knew the Horse Shoe brewery grumble about their old missing landmark when the Dominion appeared? 

As for the date of the famous 1814 London Beer Flood? 

It was 17^th October. 

Cheers! 

Penny Dolan 

A Boy Called M.O.U.S.E (Bloomsbury)

Scouting locations by Eve Edwards

One of the joys of being a writer is that you have a job that includes all the best roles in film making.  The script writing part is obvious.  As director, you plan the story, the look of your concept, set the tone for the whole.  You cast your movie without having to worry about including the latest flavour-of-the-month hottie even if he is not suited to the part.  The only fly in the ointment preventing this being a one person show are the equivalent of the studio producers and distributors: the publishers and the shops. But, hey, I suppose us authors have to be kept in check somehow, don't we?

In the gallery at the Globe

One of the jobs I enjoy most is location scout.  Sometimes this is straightforward: I have an idea and go and seek out the places that I know I am going to use.  For example, when writing about Tudor London, I took the decision to include the first theatre - helpfully known as The Theatre - in the third book of the series.  I had the star-crossed lovers idea at the heart of the book.  The heroine was to be a daughter of an early English Puritan household so her opposite is, naturally, one of the players.  In this era, Puritans denounced the stage as the work of the devil and blamed them for all social ills and the earthquake of 1580 with which I start the book (The Rogue's Princess).  The Tudor theatre is not hard to find thanks to Sam Wanamaker's Globe.  Although located north of the river, The Theatre was the same structure that was dismantled and reassembled as the Globe (see a brilliant account of this in James Shapiro's 1599), so a trip to the South Bank was obvious.

Chocks away!

Some research trips take a little more planning.  I'm now writing a two part series for the anniversary of the outbreak of World War I.  The first part, called Dusk (out Summer 2013), entailed a trip to the Somme area.  If you are interested in this period, I can't recommend too highly the museum at Peronne. As well as a clear narrative, they have full kit for different kinds of soldier, officers and men, laid out as if for inspection and lots of very personal items that bring the individuals into focus.

 For the second part Dawn (which I'm in the process of researching at the moment) I intend to use some of the experiences of the early aviators.  Well, naturally, there was only one thing for it: find out what it was like to fly in an open cockpit.  I went up in a Tiger Moth in June - designed in the Twenties so fairly close to the planes my characters would use.  I hope you like the full Amy Johnson look.  And to prove that, yes, I really did go up, here's a shot from the air.  It may look as if I'm the pilot but in fact I'm in the observer's seat - the pilot sits behind in these two-seaters.  Alex, my guide for the day, entered into the spirit of the thing as we looked for 'Jerry' over the Cotswolds.

These were planned locations but very often the chance-met location inspires the story that follows.  We are fortunate in the UK to live in a country seeded liberally with little historic gems.  The manor at Snowshill owned by the National Trust provided me with unexpected inspiration when I went there with my family on an Easter egg hunt.  It suggested what life in the ranks below the highest would have been for Tudor gentlemen.  It wasn't the manor itself but the hidden corners that spoke to me about the texture of this life - here the studded nails and horse shoes.  This set the tone for my inner director and was used in The Other Countess.

Perhaps you have a favourite location.  If so, do tell me about it.