SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS

Jane Austen was born 250 years ago in Hampshire and is regarded by many as England’s greatest female author. Writing in an age when women were not considered to have credibility in the arts she had to fight a society seeped in misogamy and had written both Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice by the time she was 27 and was still an unpublished author.  

Knowing I would have time on my hands as I temporarily stay in Cumbria waiting to move house I decided Sense and Sensibility would be on my reading list. Although I’ve already read and enjoyed Austen’s Northanger Abbey I did find Sense and Sensibility a hard read. However I’m glad I read it and having recently bought her whole collection I look forward to whatever my next choice will be.

Most likely I’ll choose Pride and Prejudice, so when I saw the play was on a run at the Theatre By The Lake in nearby Keswick I wasn’t sure whether to see it or not. I know the gist of the book but why would I want to know more before I read it?

But as my stay in Cumbria lingered on and the chance of seeing a production at this theatre became increasingly tempting I decided to go in the final week of its run. I wasn’t disappointed.

Opened and supported by Academy Award winning actress Judi Dench and her actor husband Michael Williams in 1999, and situated alongside Lake Derwentwater, it would be hard to imagine a more beautiful setting for a theatre.

Thankfully the production matched the location. Played very much for laughs and accentuating what a funny writer Jane Austen was, it was a wonderful play with a marvellous cast, almost good enough to warm me through the soaking I’d received in my walk through in Keswick (honestly, drenched. Soaking. I’m surprised I didn’t squelch when I walked). When it rains in Keswick, believe me it rains hard.

So if you’re ever in Cumbria on holiday go to Derwentwater, take in The Theatre by The Lake, even if it’s just a tour of the building. And as long as you take a weather-proof coat, just in case, you won’t regret it.