Fellowship & Fairydust

By Helen Bang, playwright

Word Count: 945

Rating: G

Summary: The 18th century swashbuckling dandy, inspiration for the Batman-Superman-Spiderman archetype, is set to make a rumbustious return to the stage in Scotland in an epic production directed by Bard in the Botanics’ Associate Director, Jennifer Dick.

I wrote my first adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel when I was twelve years old. My teacher said she’d enjoyed it, but it perhaps wasn’t the best choice for an all-girls’ school production.

My actors luckily haven’t seen that script…

Baroness Orczy’s hero first appeared on stage at the Nottingham Playhouse, before she was able to publish her novel. Subsequent novels and short stories followed. There have also been multiple adaptations for film, radio, television, ballet, and musical theatre. But there hasn’t been a new straight stage version since Beverley Cross’ adaptation starring Donald Sinden in 1985. (When Donald was sixty-two… and Sir Percy is ‘one or two years the right side of thirty…’)

Some people think they know all about the Scarlet Pimpernel – he’s that camp buffoon who rescues people from the guillotine, isn’t he? I mean everyone has seen Blackadder, right? And it’s all rather arch and knowing and dated.

That’s not how I see the character at all. Percy Blakeney is mischievous, playful, insolent. He uses ridicule and mockery to attack tyrants – a very effective weapon, as they detest being laughed at.

In many ways I think he’s like Roger – Big X – from The Great Escape. You know, when the Senior British Officer asks him if the Gestapo had given him a rough time, ‘Oh, not nearly so rough a time as I now intend to give them.’ And then proceeds to mastermind the biggest POW break-out of WWII. That is how I see Sir Percy’s motivation – he sees the revolution has descended into barbarism and thinks ‘up with this I will not put.’

Similarly, many people think the French revolution was when the starving peasants rose up and beheaded the oppressive nobles – who probably deserved it. But only a fifth of the people sent to the guillotine during the Terror had titles. Most were people who had fallen afoul of the regime: journalists who had written the wrong article, rival politicians, poets, scientists, businessmen suspected of profiteering, etc. What began as an optimistic revolution welcomed by many (‘Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive…’) soon turned into a nightmare. Arab Spring, anyone?

Although set during the French Revolution, the original novels are very Edwardian in tone. I wanted to set the story firmly in the world of the beau monde in Georgian London and the police state that was Paris during the Terror. The Georgians were just like us – obsessed with celebrities and shopping. There was a lot of money pouring into London – from the slave trade, from the mills and mines of the industrial revolution, from the ships of the East India Company.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, the streets of Mayfair smelled of lavender – the servants had been washing the dogs in lavender soap prior to the parade in Hyde Park to show off one’s latest clothes or carriage.

The Georgians were addicted to gambling. The book at Brooks’ club records that the Prince of Wales once bet Charles Fox that he’d see more cats on his side of Bond Street than Charles did as they walked down from Oxford Street to Piccadilly. The only problem was, the canny Fox chose the sunny side of the street… This is the world I want to convey in my play.

There are many aspects of the original novels that I have always found extremely frustrating. The Pimpernel’s lengthy absences during many of the stories, for one! And the fact that, for supposedly swashbuckling adventures, there isn’t a single sword fight between the hero and the archvillain. I wanted to remedy that.  There are two great fights in my play.

I wanted to explore the complicated relationship between Percy and his wife, the deep friendships he has with his devoted followers, and the reason why, having unmasked his nemesis, Chauvelin does not reveal this knowledge to anyone else.

I ended up creating a whole new story arc that uses some of the plot elements from the original novel, an entirely new middle act made up by myself, an Act III with elements from Eldorado, the novel about rescuing the Dauphin, and a surprise escape at the finale…

It was a blast to write. Baroness Orczy is always writing how witty Sir Percy is, but rarely bothers to record what he actually says. Being a big fan of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, this was fun dialogue to invent:

‘That coat fits you very ill, Montagu, very ill indeed.’

‘This coat, Sir Percy? But it fits me like a glove.’

‘But my dear sir, it’s supposed to fit like a coat.’

My play has already had a rehearsed reading with a professional cast for an invited audience in Glasgow. Now we are about to raise funds via a crowdfunding campaign for a weeklong showcase of this large scale production (ten actors playing a total of twenty-two characters), with the intention of attracting further investment to take the play on tour.

Directed by Jennifer Dick, Associate Director of Bard in the Botanics, (www.bardinthebotanics.co.uk) and designed by experienced theatre designer Carys Hobbs, this is going to be an exhilarating evening of live theatre.

The crowdfunding site will be going live soon. In the meantime, you can follow progress here: howiraisedmoneytoproducemyplay.wordpress.com/