Swallows ahoy... (From The Northern Echo)

Swallows ahoy...

3:09pm Friday 20th January 2012 in Features By Steve Pratt

Steve Pratt discovers how the children’s classic book by Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons, is all set to gain a new generation of young fans. Director Tom Morris, adaptor Helen Edmundson and songwriter Neil Hannon, from band The Divine Comedy, explain the appeal of a Twenties book about sailing.

DIRECTOR Tom Morris, co-creator of the stage version of War Horse, had a proposal when he approached pop singer-songwriter Neil Hannon after a concert five years ago. “He loomed over me and said ‘I think we should do a musical’,” recalls Hannon, who formed the band The Divine Comedy while at school in Enniskillen.

The idea appealed to him – “I always thought it would be a good area for me because I enjoy telling stories” – but it took an age to figure out a subject for a musical.

The answer was found close to home – when he bought a copy of Arthur Ransome’s 1929 book Swallows And Amazons to read to his daughter, Willow, as a bedtime story. It tells of the Walker and Blackett children’s school holiday exploits in the Lake District, as they set sail for adventures in their dinghies, the Swallow and the Amazon.

Hannon wrote the songs for the musical play which has a book by Helen Edmundson, whose stage work includes such literary adaptations as Anna Karenina, Mill On The Floss, War And Peace and Coram Boy.

Hannon hadn’t read the book – the first in a series of 12 by Ransome – before his bedtime sessions. “I had always thought I would probably like it, but never got around to it,” he says.

He didn’t want to do anything “terribly serious or adult” for his first venture into musical theatre. His favourite musicals are mostly pre-1970. Sondheim’s work is an exception, but he talks of shows from the golden age by Rogers and Hart, Rogers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter and “Lionel Bart even”, he says. Gilbert and Sullivan also rate a mention.

“These are writers of tunes that you think have always existed and will exist forever. That’s the songwriting I really admire – where songs can exist in their own right beyond a show.”

He saw most of these musicals on TV. “I’ve never been much of a theatregoer. I was living in Northern Ireland for my first 20 years and there was no theatre. Then in London, I was too busy being a pop person. I’ve tried to see more in my 30s,” says Hannon.

Morris, artistic director of Bristol Old Vic, had read Swallows And Amazons as a child, partly because his dad was very keen on sailing. “When we all started thinking about it, and the world it describes, we found it extraordinary how the imagination of a child works and how children play in any age. Once we got Helen on board to adapt it, it became more and more exciting and relevant,” says Morris.

EDMUNDSON was not an instant fan of the book. “I was too young when I first tried to read it when I was about eight. I started the first few pages and I had no idea what they were talking about with the boating stuff. I didn’t finish it,” she says.

“When Tom asked me to do it I read and got beyond the boating stuff and started to understand the thrill. The whole thing does come together very beautifully. The boat is a symbol of adventure – you decide your own destiny, having to steer through the choppy waters, worrying about the wind and the sun. It’s a lovely image for children starting out in life trying to negotiate their way.

“It was the characters that attracted me more than anything, the honesty with which they’re drawn and the relationships between the different children. They are so right – everybody recognises the family dynamics.

“The sibling stuff that goes on is so beautifully drawn and the way that the children learn and develop and challenge each other.”

In many ways she approached this as she has previous literary adaptations. “Quite a few of those have been very complex psychologically.

That was there in Ransome’s work, although the characters are very clear and very honest. The musical element just adds a new challenge and means it has to be collaborative, a much more open process,” she says.

She didn’t want the Twenties-set book to feel like a period piece.

“One of the first things we did was to make sure the Amazons were extremely robust and ordinary girls who happen to live in the Lake District and have access to boats,” she explains.

“In the novel they come from a very wealthy family. But we wanted the Amazons to be opposite of the Swallows and make them as raucous as possible. It’s set in the Twenties, but we don’t harp on that.”

The production, which was staged in Bristol, is now touring – to Darlington Civic Theatre among other venue – through the Children’s Touring Partnership.

“When we started talking to our audiences in Bristol about the novel there was an assumption that if you hadn’t been sailing as a child or heard of Arthur Ransome it might not be something you wanted to go and see.

“Then we started talking to children about whether anyone had played pirates and we discovered every child in Bristol – and it’s pretty much the same everywhere else – had done. It means something to children who’ve never heard of the book or the world it represents because it’s about the imagination.”

With War Horse on his CV, Morris obviously knows how to stage a production that pleases the whole family. “The kind of theatre that’s most inspired me and I’m most interested to put on is the kind that’s different from film or TV, that heavily relies on the participation of the audience.

“The lovely thing about it is if you make a show in that spirit the audience understand why you’re telling a story in a theatre rather than on screen. They instinctively feel the difference.”

He tells of hearing children saying to their parents on the way out of the theatre, “You didn’t tell me theatre could be fun.”

• Swallows And Amazons: Darlington Civic Theatre, March 6-10. Box office 01325-486555 and darlingtonarts.co.uk