Ballet Shoes
Why do girls have to apologise for being...well, girls?
I had a wonderful evening last night at the National Theatre, London’s South Bank. I went with my daughter (her Christmas present to me) to see Kendall Feaver’s adaptation of Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes. Directed by Katy Rudd, they did the show with verve and joy, delighting the sold-out audience. Not quite a Christmas play, it has that family-fun emotion, with the audience encouraged to practice our ballet arms beforehand.
I recommend you see it before it reaches the end of its run if you are near London. The audience was predominantly groups of women, mother-daughter combos like mine, and the occasional father-daughter pair. Take your son - why not?
It led me into thinking about the writing challenge of adapting Children’s classics for stage or screen. The National has a history of doing this successfully - Treasure Island, His Dark Materials and most successfully of all The Wind in the Willows. That production has been spun off into many a production around the country - I saw one in a windy outdoor theatre in Cornwall. Alan Bennett (adaptor and actor) is forever in my mind Mole.
I don’t think Treasure Island and His Dark Materials received the same kind of love as they aren’t so fondly thought of, not nursery-aged reads but with darker adult themes.
Ballet Shoes is an interesting bridge between the two as so many women love it as a book that helped them grow up and dream.
Houston, we have a girl problem
It is disappointing, therefore, that this hit show has been in anyway remarkable for the choice of book to adapt. The director remarked to Stage this month that telling girls’ stories ‘can seem off-putting’. Would anyone have said telling boys’ stories, such as Treasure Island, is off-putting? Are we less ashamed of being pirate than a ballerina? A law court would definitely not agree, but somehow society has persuaded itself that a peg leg and parrot is more acceptable combination than, well, combinations - an intriguing Edwardian piece of female underwear such as the girls in the book would wear.
As a side note here, His Dark Materials doesn’t fit the bill despite its heroine as Lyra is joined by a mixed cast of boys, man, witches, bears etc. and it is written by a man (Philip Pullman), of course. Though excellent is many ways, in her moments alone, Lyra doesn’t think about feeling grumpy when on her period, how her knickers and bra fit, whether to put on make-up or not, having spots or a bad hair day, what it feels like when someone elbows you in the chest in your more active moments etc. - in fact she isn’t in very girlish, adolescent body. Dare I say, she could be a boy? Feisty is the word usually given to that kind of heroine.
Did any of those details make you squirm? We need to get over this. That’s why last night it was fun seeing girls and women fighting for their futures in a modern female-eye adaptation of the book that questions the motives of GUM - the male collector who sends the babies back to Sylvia and Nana. It’s done with humour but that part of Streatfeild’s story couldn’t pass without comment in the 21st century.
So why apologise for letting women be centre stage? It’s as though we have to keep re-learning the lesson that over half the population is female and has tastes that might diverge from the kind of man who is happier going to Dear England (the football themed hit from the National, which is returning later this year). We had this ages ago with the Bridget Jones books and films, Mama Mia, even Wicked. I wish men wouldn’t count themselves out of girls’ stories and we women don’t feel we have to apologise for what we like - indeed, encourage the men in our lives to like it too. I would think many boys would identify with Posy, Pauline and Petrova if they allowed themselves - or were given a non-sparkly not-pink copy of the book - because it is about finding your way, deciding what you want to do with your life: film star, professional dancer, explorer and mechanic…
Can we have some more, please?
I have a book, a multi-award winning modern classic, The Diamond of Drury Lane, which a talented adaptor/composer (James D. Reid) has turned into a musical. National (or any other theatre) if you are reading this, there’s an audience out there for adaptations of books written by women with girls at the heart of the story. Give me a ring.
One more thing --It was apparently the first book adopted by Texas schools with a girl as the main character.
Dear Julia,
This reminds me of my mother's textbook division of her publishing company, and her efforts to sell to school districts a book with a girl at the center, "Top Hand at Lone Tree Ranch." The western theme would, you'd think, be in its favor here in Texas. She pitched it to school boards, as it was done in that day (1930s), by saying, "You know, more than half your students are girls. How many readers about girls do you have?" It was successful.