Mild Peril in Bury
My bravery usually goes unremarked but I have to point out to you our courage at traversing the vasty wastes of snow known as the Pennines on Saturday morning.
We used a little-known cart track called the M62: here it is:
We struggled our way across Saddleworth Moor - though actually it looked, if anything, less bleak than usual when covered in snow:
Finally we emerged from the wilderness and found ourselves in Bury.
And there we saw The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch, performed by Pied Piper Theatre Company.
It's a two-hander - the characters were lighthouse-keeper Mr Grinling and his wife, whose name, unsurprisingly, was Mrs Grinling. Robert Took, who's one of the actors I work with, played Mr Grinling (he also played the guitar and ukulele. Or it may have been a banjo. I'm not very good at small stringed instruments).
Here's a photo of Rob in his lighthouse. Yes, I know, I shouldn't be taking photos in the middle of the play, but I did at least turn the flash off and nobody noticed.
We were slightly older than the target age group, which was three to seven years. Though after a very busy week I felt that the plot contained just about the right level of tension for me.
Every day Mr Grinling would row across to the lighthouse and every day his wife would send over a basket with his lunch on it. She'd send it on a wire and he would haul it from the mainland. BUT - - and this was the crucial bit - some seagulls kept pouncing on the basket and stealing the food. So - without giving too much away - the dramatic plot centred on how the seagulls could be prevented from doing this.
Sadly they didn't ask me, or I would have pointed out that if Mrs Grinling got up half an hour earlier and got the lunch ready, Mr Grinling could have taken it with him in the rowing boat. Problem solved.
Or - and I know this is a bit controversial - she could taken the feminist approach and gone out and got a job as a chartered accountant or something and Mr Grinling could have made his own lunch.
But nobody asked me, so they had to sort out their own salvation, which they did to the accompaniment of much jolly sea-shantyish music. Finally the seagulls were thwarted and everyone lived happily ever after. I do hope that doesn't spoil the ending for you, if you happen to see the show.
It held the attention of the tinies throughout, and even I didn't cry once.
It takes a tremendous amount of skill and energy to perform a show like this and the two actors involved had both of these. So far they have done 130 performances, with more to come. It's not all glamour, showbiz.
We used a little-known cart track called the M62: here it is:
We struggled our way across Saddleworth Moor - though actually it looked, if anything, less bleak than usual when covered in snow:
Finally we emerged from the wilderness and found ourselves in Bury.And there we saw The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch, performed by Pied Piper Theatre Company.
It's a two-hander - the characters were lighthouse-keeper Mr Grinling and his wife, whose name, unsurprisingly, was Mrs Grinling. Robert Took, who's one of the actors I work with, played Mr Grinling (he also played the guitar and ukulele. Or it may have been a banjo. I'm not very good at small stringed instruments).
Here's a photo of Rob in his lighthouse. Yes, I know, I shouldn't be taking photos in the middle of the play, but I did at least turn the flash off and nobody noticed.
We were slightly older than the target age group, which was three to seven years. Though after a very busy week I felt that the plot contained just about the right level of tension for me.Every day Mr Grinling would row across to the lighthouse and every day his wife would send over a basket with his lunch on it. She'd send it on a wire and he would haul it from the mainland. BUT - - and this was the crucial bit - some seagulls kept pouncing on the basket and stealing the food. So - without giving too much away - the dramatic plot centred on how the seagulls could be prevented from doing this.
Sadly they didn't ask me, or I would have pointed out that if Mrs Grinling got up half an hour earlier and got the lunch ready, Mr Grinling could have taken it with him in the rowing boat. Problem solved.Or - and I know this is a bit controversial - she could taken the feminist approach and gone out and got a job as a chartered accountant or something and Mr Grinling could have made his own lunch.
But nobody asked me, so they had to sort out their own salvation, which they did to the accompaniment of much jolly sea-shantyish music. Finally the seagulls were thwarted and everyone lived happily ever after. I do hope that doesn't spoil the ending for you, if you happen to see the show.
It held the attention of the tinies throughout, and even I didn't cry once.
It takes a tremendous amount of skill and energy to perform a show like this and the two actors involved had both of these. So far they have done 130 performances, with more to come. It's not all glamour, showbiz.
posted by Daphne at 6:06 pm
3 Comments:
I feel the title of your post is a tiny bit misleading. Was the peril the snow on the journey TO Bury? Or was the peril that faced by Mr Grinling and his lunch (and you didn't even mention his cat's perilous journey across the wire in a basket)?
What's really scary is that The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch is just one in a whole series of children's books including The Lighthouse Keeper's Cat, The Lighthouse Keeper's Breakfast, The Lighthouse Keeper's Picnic, The Lighthouse Keeper's Rescue and, perhaps most alarmingly, The Lighthouse Keeper's Catastrophe!
The M62, what memories...closed all winter I would guess....
Mr Grinling could have borrowed a twelve bore shotgun and blasted the seagulls to smithereens. Then he would have received a lunch that had not been pecked at. Mrs Grinling might have popped the lunch in a Tupperware box to thwart the gulls but I prefer the gun method.
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