Review: Swallows and Amazons - Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

By Joyce McMillan
Published on Thursday 2 February 2012 01:08

BETTER drowned than duffers; if not duffers, won’t drown.

This is the brusque telegram message with which the children’s dad, a distant naval officer, kicks off Arthur Ransome’s famous 1920s adventure story Swallows And Amazons, in which four children set off in a sailing dinghy to occupy a lakeland island, sleep out in tents and involve themselves in various exciting adventures.

With the jubilee and Olympics in the offing, the celebration of traditional British virtues – toughness in war, stiff upper lip – is apparently all the rage in the Home Counties. What’s difficult about the show, though, is the almost complete absence of connection between the adventure of the Swallows and Amazons and anything that might happen to a child today.

The story occupies a zone between wild imagination and real outdoor experience that barely exists for today’s heavily-protected kids; and this adaptation does nothing to illuminate or challenge that deep social change.

Instead, at two-and-a-half hours, it’s both slightly aimless and definitely over-extended; and it’s presented by a cast deliberately divided between the six children and seven “players in blue”, working-class figures who hurry around in flat caps and overalls making it all happen, while the little heroes and heroines sing forgettable songs about courage, leadership and team effort. All six of the actors playing the children turn in excellent performances.

In the end, though, I was left wondering just what it was all for; if not to make us wish we were back in 1929, when virtuous young Brits like the Walker children ruled half the earth, and all was right with the world.

RATING: ***

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