I find the past seven days have been rather dramatic. Indeed, exceedingly dramatic embracing as they have one play acted in, one play attended and another play written. All of which, I can’t help feeling, must be something of a record - even for an amateur of the theatre like myself.
Suitably clad in scarlet I was bidden to play a dying Cardinal Wolsey in ‘A Man For All Seasons’ - grunting my way peremptorily through an argument with Sir Thomas More. What the argument was about you only need to read Hilary Mantel’s excellent book ‘Wolf Hall’ to discover. Her treatment is rather more enlightening than Robert Bolt’s play even if she does play a game called ‘guess which character my pronouns are now referring to.’ If you pick up the book - and it is the bestseller of the moment - you will know what I mean.
That play ended its run on Saturday with our traditional relaxed cheese and paté supper for the actors and punters alike in the theatre bar. Another production put to bed signals that it is time to think about the next one. Which is where the play written comes in, or rather finished. Except, strictly speaking, it’s more of an adaptation than a play.
Our little rural town is twinned with a similar little rural town in France and our franco- and anglophile families have been shuttling back and forth annually for over twenty years now. I even had the honour to be at one time Vice-Chair of this group and charged with extracting generous subsidies from the European Commission for these cultural and sporting, boozy and gastronomic exchanges.
Recently I found that at one of these suppers in the past - buoyed no doubt by the shabby high of applause and performance - I had made the mistake of suggesting that our little theatre could stage a show for the French visitors. And then two months ago I found myself bounced into doing just that: producing a show of not more than an hour that would be equally comprehensible to someone speaking English only, or French only and that would be sufficiently entertaining to keep our travel-weary and sleep-deprived visitors awake after an alcoholic dinner.
“I’ll adapt the tale of ‘The Little Prince," I said. Which suggestion generally found favour.
Now 'The Little Prince,' or in French ‘Le Petit Prince,’ is a book that French children learn and love from an early age. It is one of those books in which an adult takes a look at the world through a child’s eyes and this makes it both appealing to children and adults. It is unique. A pilot crashes in the desert and he meets a little fellow from a distant star who asks him to make a drawing of sheep. The French government even put its author, his aeroplane and the Little Prince himself on the old 50 franc banknote.
The author - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - lived and died a pilot. When he wasn’t flying, he wrote. He helped to establish airmail services to Africa and later flew reconnaissance missions with the French Air Force. His book ‘Pilote de Guerre’ - (rendered for some reason ‘Flight to Arras’ in English) is one of the greatest novels to express the futility of war. Except it’s not really a novel. He is flying his plane, the mission is absurd, there's a two to one chance he won't get back safely, and yet he is detached, impersonal, dreaming of what is going on around him, the number of switches in his cockpit.
Maybe he was dreaming again on the 31 July 1944 when his aeroplane disappeared into the sea off the coast of Marseille. Who knows what book might then have been in his head? A few years ago both the wreck of his plane and his identity bracelet were found - but, despite various claims, how he met his end will never be known.
Luckily for us between the fall of France in 1940 and his return to active service with the Free French Forces, Saint-Exupéry sought sanctuary in New York and wrote both ‘Pilote de Guerre’ and ‘Le Petit Prince’ on the safer shores of Long Island.
So what is the story about? Le Petit Prince imagines other planets, or rather asteroids, populated not by people but rather each by a single person - so as we follow the Little Prince on a journey across the heavens we meet strange but eternal characters: the businessman, the drunkard, the follower of orders. We encounter love and emotion, pride and folly, longing and intelligence, a fox that wants to be tamed and a flower, cold and haughty.
It is no wonder that French people take this book - and its author - to their hearts. So it is with no little trepidation that I try to adapt it for our show. Adaptations have been made before, of course. There is even a DVD. You can do much on film. But these just tell the story of book and for me they miss the magic.
My adaptation may miss the magic too, but I hope that amid the necessary comedy something of a child's sense of wonder at the universe remains. I have had to change much, condense much. Owing to the limitations of our theatre wardrobe I have had to change the fox who eats chickens into a crocodile. Do crocodiles eat chickens? I have changed the ending too. But in a short piece that has simultaneously to stumble between two languages without boring its audience it has been impossible to include very much of the Little Prince’s philosophy.
Still I have enjoyed writing it and felt at times almost as though the Little Prince himself was sitting on my shoulder, so I hope that Saint-Exupéry will not be turning with irritation in his watery grave at my presumption. He is, I am sure, a reasonable mentor and will only expect what he knows I can fulfil.
Perhaps it was the Little Prince who directed me to seek tickets for Chekov’s ‘The Cherry Orchard’ at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. This was the play watched. Just to remind me what a good play should be like, perhaps. And a good production too, for a play is just paper without talent to shake it from the page and bring it howling into life. This production was quite superb: a credit to all concerned. If we are a quarter as good with our production of 'The Little Prince' that will be a miracle.
