Setting Sail with Swallows and Amazons

The Swallows and Amazons musical made a great start to its national tour at the Chichester Festival Theatre on Tuesday. The first performance received a very positive audience reaction and the later performances during the week are already sold out.

We are grateful to the Children’s Touring Partnership for taking our Voyages of Discovery display with them on the tour. The display comes in two parts, one introducing Arthur Ransome’s life, the other Swallows and Amazons. Please do look out for it, if you are going to any of the tour venues, and we hope it enhances your enjoyment of the play itself.

Update on Online Donations

We’re pleased to say that our online donation pages at Charity Choice are now working again. You can connect to them here, or by the Charity Choice logo in the sidebar.

Many thanks to the staff at Charity Choice for resolving this matter!

Online Donations Via Charity Choice

We’re sorry to say that our online donations service via Charity Choice is currently unavailable. This is due to a recent upgrade in the Charity Choice website, and we are working to re-instate an online donation option as soon as we can. In the meantime our text and postal donation systems are both still available.

Please accept our apologies for any incovenience caused.

Audience Reactions to Swallows and Amazons

Are you wondering whether to go and see Swallows and Amazons, either at the Vaudeville, or on its 2012 UK tour?

If so, you may find these audience interviews both interesting and informative.

Meanwhile Stagetext advise that tickets for the captioned performance on January 12 are selling fast.

Swallows and Amazons Gets Five Stars

Swallows and Amazons has opened to strong reviews at the Vaudeville. The Daily Telegraph’s Charles Spencer awarded it five stars, asking readers to tip him the Black Spot, if they manage to find a better family show this festive season.

The show also found approval with the Evening Standard and Official London Theatre, as well as farther field, where the Chicago Tribune looks ahead to say: “Following a four-month U.K. tour, its hugely appealing good humor and heart deserve a return engagement at the very least.”

Swallows and Amazons Musical Book Published

The opening of Swallows and Amazons at the Vaudeville, also marks the publication of  Helen Edmundson’s theatrical adaptation of Arthur Ransome’s classic novel.

The theatre book is available to buy from the publisher, Nick Hern Books’s website, and should also be in stock or available to order from all good bookshops soon. ISBN: 9781848422377, Price: £9.99.

Insights into the Swallows and Amazons Rehearsal Room

Herewith some more links about the new Swallows and Amazons production, including Tom Morris’s account of rehearsing (and re-adapting) the Musical, and Stewart Wright’s blog, which includes rehearsal photographs.

Correction to Voyages of Discovery

Further to our previous news item, the Voyages of Discovery display will not be available at the Vaudeville, from 20 December – 14 January. The reason is that the theatre has insufficient space “front of house”, and needs to keep what it has clear at such a busy time of the year. In addition to the Swallows and Amazons Musical, the theatre is also presenting Potted Panto over the holiday period.

We are sorry to disappoint anybody who was hoping to see the display whilst the Musical is in London. We still expect that it will be available at the UK Tour venues from January onwards, hosted by the Children’s Touring Partnership and the participating theatres.

Spies and Commissars

Anybody interested in learning more about the early post-Revolutionary period in Russia, and about Arthur Ransome’s role within it, may be interested in Spies and Commissars: Bolshevik Russia and the West, by Robert Service, published this month.

You can read a review in today’s Daily Telegraph.

Swallows and Amazons Previews Open Tonight

The first preview performance for the Swallows and Amazons musical takes place tonight at the Vaudeville Theatre, on the Strand. The curtain goes up at 7.30pm.

For those who can’t wait, the Evening Standard recently published an article reviewing the production, including interviews with lyricist, Neil Hannon and the director, Tom Morris.