The Best of What's On

by Helen Wall

Have you noticed that the nights are drawing out? Not much, it must be said, but enough to give me a bit of a lift; the Spring is on its way. The problem is we have no money left after Christmas, and entertainment, so abundant before the festive season when we didn't have time to enjoy it, seems to dry up completely. However, there is always the great outdoors to enjoy for free. The snowdrops on this picture were seen at Ash Landing nature reserve on the shores of Windermere (near the Ferry). What an amazingly mild winter we have had so far, but February could surprise us yet.

For those who can afford to go out, here are a number of events for which it is well worth breaking the bank. Read on...

The Fitzrovia Radio Hour, Heron Theatre, Beetham February 10 and 11 and Theatre by the Lake, Keswick February 13

Here's something of outstanding quality and sheer pointless fun coming to Cumbria from London's West End. The Fitzrovia Radio Hour presents ripping tales from the 1940s wireless with cut glass accents, BBC-style deferential manners and sound effects that are brilliant on a byegone radio show but hilarious when you see them done as the live action canters along.

It's been on at Shakespeare's Globe, the Edinburgh Fringe and Radio 4 and John Sergeant is one of many fans. It makes fun of attitudes of the day, especially towards women, sex, foreigners and authority as well as surprising the audience with the way some words have subtly changed meaning since 1940, while others have dropped out of circulation.

If you choose to see it at the enterprising little Heron Theatre in Beetham (down, or up the A6, just south of Milnthorpe) we recommend the Wheatsheaf, a most handsome building serving superb food, wine and beer, but book early as it's popular. If you are not familiar with the area we can recommend spending some time there. A lunch and a browse at the Beetham Nurseries is rewarding and you can go deer spotting at Dallam Park, where the semi-wild fallow deer are quite used to people. For country walkers there are the Fairy Steps on the Limestone Link footpath between Slack Head and Hazel Slack. Heron Corn Mill just down the lane from Beetham is always worth a visit.

If you are heading for Keswick there are lots of things to do listed on our attractions pages. Details for booking the shows are on our events pages.

From Sunday 20th the town is hosting a Winter Week of Light, starting that evening with a lantern parade from the Market Square ( Satnav:CA12 5JS) at 7pm. It heads through the streets of the town to the shore of Derwentwater where there will be a spectacular fire and music finale - quite like the 1770s when Joseph Pocklington spent his money - but with better taste.

Knives in Hens by David Harrower, Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, February 3-18

There was once a ploughman, his wife and a miller, the familiar start of many a tale from an unspecified time in pre-industrial Europe - and in 1995 David Harrower used it as the basis for his first play. It has already become a modern classic and the most-performed Scottish play after Peter Pan.

The heroine doesn't even have a name; she is the Young Woman. She works in the fields, cannot read or write, doesn't even know many words and marries Pony William the ploughman. Her world is narrow and constrained by traditions, superstition, religion and men-in-charge. Pony William treats his horse with more consideration than his wife, and one he day sends her to the miller's with their grain. The miller is an outsider, hated (as millers were because they made money out of other people's hard work and were usually suspected of cheating) and dangerously literate.

A strange love-triangle wrapped in a thriller unfolds as the Young Woman gains language, knowledge and the ability it brings to imagine and to lie. The play was an immediate hit when it was first staged at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and has been produced in 25 countries around the world. Underneath the story of the ploughman and the miller is a sensitive exploration of how different written language is to an oral tradition and what a radical change literacy makes to our lives.

Harrower himself said the play: "Came out of a long, fulminating play about land ownership in Lowland Scotland, the countryside surrounding Edinburgh where I was born and brought up". In it a travelling storyteller comes to market and tells a story of a wife and her ploughman and her journey to the mill and what befalls her there.

"That larger play is long cold in the ground but this small sketch of a story remained with me. I wrote it quickly, no hesitancy as to its merit or historical accuracy."

He added:"I bloody love this play. It means the world to me. It's where I found my voice; the play in which I shed notions of how a play must be written that I'd held for a long enough time; the play that suggested I was maybe, just maybe, mastering this slippery craft." The play is perfect for the intense atmosphere of the Studio, where Harrower's disturbing two-hander Blackbird was a big hit in the 2009 Summer Season.

Knives in Hens, a play that worms its way into your brain and won't go away, is directed by Jez Pike, who is training to be a director at Birkbeck, University of London, and is on a nine-month placement at Theatre by the Lake. He was assistant director on Keep Smiling Through in the 2011 Summer Season and The Firework-Maker's Daughter, the 2011 Christmas production.

Pike describes his work on Knives in Hens as "a challenging and often unexpected journey" and he has spent many hours with designer Thomasin Marshall discussing how to stage some scenes - especially one in which a mare gives birth to a foal.

Of the three actors appearing in Knives in Hens, two are making their first appearance at Theatre by the Lake. Helen Macfarlane had considerable acting experience before training at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, from which she graduated last summer. Liam Smith trained at Mountview Theatre School and Rose Bruford College and has since played many roles for a variety of companies. Adam O'Brian came to Keswick for the first time in 2010, appearing in Shining City, What the Butler Saw and The Glass Menagerie in the Summer Season.

Once again Theatre by the Lake is encouraging anyone aged under 26 to experience live theatre by offering Friday £5 tickets. To book check out our events pages.

Original costume drawings by Oliver Messel, The Beacon, Whitehaven February 11-March 25

England's most celebrated theatrical designer was without doubt Oliver Messel, and an exhibition of his original drawings, on loan from the Victorian and Albert Museum in London, highlights his connection with a Cumbrian businessman.

Messel's stage career began when he worked with the great impresario of ballet, Serge Diaghilev in 1925. Their collaboration flourished, with Messel's 1946 designs for The Sleeping Beauty universally regarded as the iconic high point of the ballet's history.

His stage and film career was successful on both sides of the Atlantic, with award winning stage productions like The House of Flowers in the USA and films such as Suddenly Last Summer, starring Katherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor.

His talents extended beyond theatre and films and encompassed painting, interior design and architecture, all infused with his vision of beauty, romance, wit and fun.

His design for opera at Covent Garden and at Glyndebourne in the 1950s brought him into contact with Sir Nicholas Sekers, the outstanding industrialist and designers who came to this country from Hungary after training in textile technology in Germany. He set up the West Cumberland Silk Mills in Whitehaven and built Rosehill Theatre in his garden at Moresby, just outside Whitehaven.

Sir Nicholas was noted for his passion, and tremendous support, for the arts and was a trustee of Glyndebourne. Messel extensively used Sekers Silks for costumes and for interior decoration and designed the interior of the theatre, which was described at the time as a "rose red, silk-lined jewellery box". It is one of the few remaining examples of his work in the UK, another being the famous Oliver Messel Suite in the Dorchester Hotel in London.

From 1966 until his death in 1978, Messel lived on Barbados where he went on to be a distinguished architect. The exhibition at the Beacon follows the publication by Rizzoli of New York of a definitive book on Oliver Messel's work, and the opening on February 11 will be marked by a day of talks beginning with the book's editor, Thomas Messel, Oliver Messel's nephew. He will be followed by architect and historian Jeremy Musson in the morning, while after lunch Keith Lodwick, curator at the V&A and costume historian Sarah Woodcock share their views on Messel. Details of the event, which is being held in conjunction with Rosehill, are on our events pages.

Martin Roscoe 60th birthday concert, Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal, February 4

What do you do to celebrate your 60th birthday when you are a world-renowned musician? Organise yourself some more work, which is lucky for us as Martin Roscoe is one of the finest pianists in the country (it's not just me saying that, the Daily Telegraph's critic said: "Roscoe is a pianist who both thinks and offers full-blooded playing of breadth and depth. In this country, he is an uncommon creature") and he is giving a birthday celebration concert at the Brewery in Kendal on February 4.

Here in Cumbria we have a special connection with Martin as he has made his home in the South Lakes. Martin has always loved walking in the hills and when his career was firmly established worldwide, he decided to fulfill his dream of living close to the Lake District mountains. He bought a house within a tolerable drive of Ulverston railway station and calculated that he could manage his schedule perfectly well using trains, the M6 and Manchester airport. Since moving here he has been an indefatigable supporter of music in the north, in fact one of the first things he did was to accept the presidency of the South Cumbria Music Festival based in Ulverston.

He continues as joint artistic director of the Ribble Valley International Piano Week in Blackburn, which he founded 24 years ago and is artistic director of the Beverley Chamber Music Festival.

On the national stage he has almost clocked up 100 performances with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and has close links with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Hallé, Manchester Camerata and the Northern Chamber Orchestra. He regularly performs with artists like Peter Donohoe, Tasmin Little, Jennifer Pike, Ashley Wass, Matthew Trusler and the Vertavo, Endellion and Maggini Quartets. He has joined forces with Peter Cropper, formerly violinist with the Lindsays and Moray Welsh, former principal cellist with the London Symphony Orchestra to form the Cropper Welsh Roscoe Trio, one of the most sought-after chamber ensembles in Britain. He is noted not only for outstanding musicianship, but also for a comfortable rapport with his audiences and fellow musicians and as a generous and supportive teacher. Once the work is done he likes nothing better than to drive home to Cumbria to his wife and two sons.

At Kendal Martin will be playing Beethoven's Sonata No.10 in G for Piano, Op.14/2, Schubert's Sonata in B flat D.960, Children's Corner and L'Isle Joyeuse by Debussy and Sonetto Del Petrarca 104 and Venezia e Napoli: Tarantella by Listz. Details are on our listings pages. Happy birthday for August, Martin, at least the drive home will be short.