The thing about nature in the UK is, most of it isn’t natural. It’s been shaped over centuries by human industry. In turn, the land has formed those who work it. Today, shepherds continue to shape the Lake District: grazing sheep on high fells, maintaining the distinctive dry-stone walls that pattern the lower land. They pass their learning from generation to generation, linked by blood or common occupation. This is the subject of James Rebanks’s bestselling 2015 memoir of his life as a shepherd, The Shepherd’s Life, now being played out on a stage a few miles from the land where he grew up and (via a double first at Oxford university) now lives.
His story is and is not a local affair. Images of cloud-mountained skies and sheep-scattered fields tumult across screens above and behind Martin Johns’s set, with its relief-map contours echoing hill slopes beyond the theatre (videos by Neville Bull; films by Jonny Walton). The Keswick audience knows this stage world: roars laughter at the appearance of weather-proofed tourists; sucks in its breath when foot and mouth disease arrives at the farm. Yet The Shepherd’s Life sells as far away as China. Rebanks’s frank descriptions of relationships resonate with all who have grown up within any community anywhere.
Chris Monks’s adaptation powerfully conveys the triangle of tensions that bind James (Kieran Hill), his father (Martin Barrass) and his grandfather (David Fielder); also the careful crafting of understanding between James and the older shepherd, Jean (Janine Birkett). The acting is strong. Richard Atkinson’s score weaves these incidents of the present into the tapestry of the past with a skein of folk melodies, played and sung.
Monks, who also directs, is less assured when it comes to wresting other features of the book off the page. Drama threatens to morph into illustrated lecture as characters tell each other stuff they already know, or repeatedly deliver information directly to the audience. Puppet sheep and dogs (directed and designed by Jimmy Grimes) add to this intermittent “look and learn” feel, swithering between thrilling life and illustrative doll-ness. Ultimately the production reflects the Lakeland weather: erratic, but delightful if you’ve a mind to enjoy it.
