Bend it like Blyton
Tea, scones and cakes. Picnics in the countryside. Adventures galore in remote English seaside towns. Playful fairies and elves for company, and a frisson of adventure in the air. Delightful scenes like this are reminiscent of the writings of the English author of children’s books, Enid Blyton. She is a forgotten figure in the age of Marvel and the Justice League, but to the Silent Generation, Boomers and Gen X, Blyton was inseparable in childhood as marmalade is to toast.
Hence Bumper Blyton, a performance by the UK-based Make Em Ups theatre company presented in collaboration with Kaivalya Plays. Relying entirely on the audience for its performance, the troupe requested attendees to submit amateur drawings on the theme of childhood memories. These later became the basis of numerous improvised games, skits, and a two-act play, using Blyton’s stories as inspiration.
“I grew up on the Famous Five books, so when I first saw the Bumper Blyton show in the UK, I couldn’t believe someone had come up with the idea to perfectly poach all the clichés and ‘Britishisms’ that my friends and I used to laugh at,” says producer Gaurav Singh of Kaivalya Plays, adding, “This show is both edgy and nostalgic, and I felt it would be perfect for an Indian audience.”
The Make Em Ups have been performing Bumper Blyton since 2013, as one of their many productions based on classic British literature. Others include a musical Charles Dickens-themed show, an Agatha Christie whodunnit and a John Le Carre espionage tour de force. Each piece is improvised and guided by audience suggestions as well as the cast’s imagination and creativity. After performing in countries like Italy, Sweden, Germany, the US, Canada, Australia, and more, the response to their first visit to India last week showed Blyton is alive and well among Boomers.
The most important task at hand was to prepare the audience for a form of theatre they may be unfamiliar with. The first half hour was dedicated to games like ‘Enid Blyton’s typewriter’; the group collectively created a short story in Blyton’s signature style inspired by three drawings submitted by audience members. A guessing game involved two young child detectives investigating a crime as suggested by the audience based entirely on verbal clues—no mean feat considering the suggestion was a “broken down mechanical swing”. ‘Blyton’ responded to questions from the audience, one word at a time. “Why did everyone eat cake in Blyton’s stories?” and “What’s your recipe for potted meat sandwiches?” are tackled spontaneously and humorously. These skits lead to an improvised play based on a single drawing picked from the audience’s sketches.
Since the chosen drawing depicted bathroom singing, the title was, “The Mystery of the Bathroom Singer with Curious Effects in New Delhi upon Thames”. This became the basis for the four actors—Amy Cooke-Hodgson, James Witt, Tom Wilkinson and Jonah Fazel (also the director)—to build a storyline and cook up a legible plot, with plenty of musical ditties for good measure. Ed Zanders was responsible for the live music, and the only props and sets to help the performers to shift between roles and genders, were placed in a box on stage. “The characters are different in every show, as we challenge ourselves to make it up on the spot based on nothing more than a love of Enid Blyton and entertaining an audience (and ourselves) laugh,” shares Fazel.
Explaining Blyton’s timeless appeal, Cooke-Hodgson says, “I’ve always thought that her books are perfect time capsules of not just old England, but of a simpler time, which is why it speaks to so many people across the world.” Children’s literature today is about diversity and political correctness. In Blyton’s time, it was just a small world for small kids.