I’m very fond of Bill Bryson’s travelogues, and this one was probably my favourite. Perhaps it takes someone who isn’t from here to capture the idiosyncrasies, eccentricities, quirkiness and charm of this sceptred isle. It was written some twenty-five years ago, just before his return to the US for eight years, and partly reliving his first visit some twenty years earlier. It takes us from Dover to John o’ Groats, but not in a straight line. I’d completely forgotten there had been a TV adaptation, and the question going through my mind as we entered the theatre was ‘How on earth can you stage it?’
It starts with Bryson as a young boy back in Des Moines Iowa, with a prologue that includes the opening line of the biography of his youth, The Thunderbolt Kid, my favourite opening line of any book. We soon jump forward twenty years or so to Calais where he is about to leave behind his journey through mainland Europe for his first visit to these shores, starting of course in Dover. The stage version of this first journey ends soon after it starts when he meets his future wife whilst working in a psychiatric hospital in Virginia Water. Here we jump forward to Yorkshire where he settles and children are born, missing out their brief return to Des Moines for two years, and other English homes.
Twenty or so years later, as a swan-song to Britain when the family relocated to New England for a while, he repeats the trip, and that is the meat of this show, a whistle-stop tour through many locations in England, Wales & Scotland, meeting a multitude of characters along the way, often nostalgic for the earlier trip and somewhat hostile to the changes a mere two decades have brought.
Mark Hadfield plays Bryson, a huge part, onstage the whole time, and is supported by six fine actors playing some ninety roles no less. Paul Hart’s production zips along, locations created by designer Katie Lias with simple carry-on sets and props and evocative projections by George Reeve onto the theatre’s back wall. The Watermill, a converted mill in the English countryside, is the perfect venue for this story.
I think the structure of the first half of Tim Whitnall’s adaptation would benefit from more clarity regarding the chronology, but the show does perfectly capture Bryson’s humour and love of his adopted country and makes the journey from page to stage successfully.
Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog 