Deerness Drama Group to perform Swallows and Amazons

Visitors to the recently refurbished Community Hall in Deerness — with its grand new stage and sparkling acoustic — will be surprised when they enter the building in February, to find it transformed into Coniston Water in the Lake District, complete with mountains, islands, and a mysterious houseboat.

This is the setting for Deerness Drama Group’s latest production, directed by Gill Smee and Chris Giles. Following on from its four other adaptations of children’s classics, as well as pantomimes and avant-garde entries to the SCDA festival, the group has decided to stage a musical version of Arthur Ransome’s well-known book Swallows and Amazons.

Developed for the famous Bristol Old Vic theatre, it tells the story of four rather straight-laced children on holiday in the 1950s, given permission, in those pre-risk assessment days, to take a dinghy out onto the lake with their father’s warning not to be “duffers,” in other words, just to be sensible. They soon get their sense of adventure heightened when they meet the fierce Amazon pirates, otherwise the Blackett sisters, Nancy and Peggy. After a brief “battle of the boats” on the lake, they decide to wage another war against the Blacketts’ Uncle Jim, soon to be renamed “Captain Flint,” simply because he has spent the summer writing a boring book and isn’t a fun uncle any more. That, and a mysterious burglary, makes for an exciting, funny and absorbing play, with a surprise at every turn.

The story is great fun, all the more so since the production uses a number of clever devices to turn everyday household objects into boats, rocks, weapons and everything else needed to tell the story. The cast, made up of actors ranging in age from 11 to 70 plus, have enjoyed creating their characters and learning the very catchy songs with this year’s musical director Glenys Hughes.

So if you want to see how a hall can be turned into a lake without flooding it, Deerness Dram Group encourage you to come along on February 7, 8 or 9 and join in the fun! Tickets go on sale at the Deerness Hall at 2-4pm on Sunday, January 20, Wednesday January 23 at 7-8pm and 2-4pm on Sunday, January 27, and thereafter at the Deerness Stores.