The Homing Stone” and “Old Peter” July 13, 2011
.An Arthur Ransome Trust Camp Fires Event.
This is a review of “The Homing Stone and Old Peter”, a dramatic performance by Hugh Lupton at Brantwood, Coniston, on July 13, 2011.
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Arthur Ransome’s great nephew, Hugh Lupton, enthralled nearly fifty guests at our second Camp Fires event with The Firebird and Sadko from Arthur Ransome’s classic Old Peter’s Russian Tales, together with his own “praise song” to his great-uncle, The Homing Stone.
Hugh’s “praise songs” have developed from African story-telling traditions. In The Homing Stone he told the story of Ransome’s escape from Russia in 1919. In 1913 Arthur Ransome, went to Russia to collect folktales. In his pocket he carried a stone from Peel Island on Lake Coniston, a reminder of his spiritual home. Swept up in the turbulent events of the Russian Revolution, he played chess with Lenin, became the only western journalist trusted by the Bolsheviks, and lost his heart to Evgenia, Trotsky’s secretary. In 1919 they escaped from Moscow. Ransome, the stone still in his pocket, was drawn homewards as powerfully as the salmon he loved to fish are drawn to their spawning ground.
Hugh created a fascinating sense of Arthur Ransome’s real life merging into, and out from, his own roots and the folk-tales he had studied when writing Old Peter. This seemed particularly poignant at Brantwood, with the Lake visible outside and Ransome’s own homing stone on display in the concurrent Imagination and Reality: the Art of Arthur Ransome exhibition at Brantwood.
Hugh Lupton
“Hugh Lupton’s storytelling art is sheer wizardry in the guise of utter simplicity… a packed house sat in a thrall of enchantment, no movement, no intrusive sounds…” (Eastern Daily Press review of Hugh’s Psalms from the Horse’s Mouth).
Hugh Lupton became one of Britain’s first professional storytellers in 1981, working largely in schools. In 1985 he formed the Company of Storytellers with a view to introducing storytelling to adult audiences. The Company toured for twelve years and was instrumental in stimulating a nation-wide revival in interest in the storytelling art. He has written and performed many works. Full details can be found at his website, www.hughlupton.com
The Homing Stone was commissioned by the Bath Literature Festival and first performed there in March 2009.
