In 2018, I received an email from the producer Simon Friend, inquiring if I was familiar with Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island. (Boy, was I.) A few coffees and a curry later, Simon had commissioned me to adapt one of his – and many other people’s – favourite books as a theatre piece. Once the storm surge of impostor syndrome had abated, I began to appreciate the exigencies of the job-in-hand: to transform a bestselling 379-page travelogue examining Britain’s “public face and private parts” into a two-act play.
Immersing myself in all things Bryson, I reread Notes and its equally engaging 2015 sequel, The Road to Little Dribbling, and gorged on podcasts and interviews to reacquaint myself with the author’s characteristic tone. Though I was intent on emulating the original book, it seemed equally important to convey the essence of a national treasure – his charm, wit and occasional rants. Thrillingly, just as I’d finished reading The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bryson’s joyful account of his Iowa childhood, the man himself agreed to meet with our team to discuss the adaptation. (Yes, he still totes a rucksack.)
Though graciously sanctioning the project, Bill said that he couldn’t imagine how his book might make the jump from page to stage. I was loth to confess that the same question had also been badgering the playwright. How would he transport his protagonist from Planet Electro in the distant Galaxy of Zizz to the Potato Marketing Board in Cowley? Would the actor playing Mrs Smegma, the formidable Dover guesthouse landlady, be able to double as a Glasgow publican?
Eager to visit as many locations as possible from Bill’s travels, my research swiftly became a transport of delights: Leighton House Gallery in Holland Park with its exquisite Middle Eastern tiles and indoor fountain; the Barley Mow pub at Englefield Green, a slice of unmitigated England with its adjacent cricket green and wrought iron arches reclaimed from Covent Garden’s Opera Terrace. This was also the stomping ground for a 22-year-old Bryson in which he’d cemented his love for British ale and a nurse named Cynthia who would become his wife.
In Oxford, I made a beeline for the Merton College Warden’s Quarters, the target of a Bryson bashing due to its “mindless” mid-century design. To my surprise, I arrived to find that the former “toaster with windows” had been given a facelift in 2012 to blend it in more harmoniously with its more historic neighbours. I’d love to think that Bill’s lacerating critique had prompted the decision to remodel.
As I delved ever deeper into Notes, it became increasingly apparent that despite a palpable affection for his adopted country, Bryson’s writing avoided any trace of toffee-tin tweeness, constantly luring his reader away from laugh-out-loud scrutiny towards murkier territory: the decline of Britain’s coastal resorts, the homogenisation of its town centres and the demise of the industrial north. He recounts his role in the rancorous 1986 Wapping dispute and revisits the sanatorium where he’d also worked, horrified to discover its conversion into a gated development for the well-heeled.
Strikes? An NHS in crisis? Economic inequality? Such revelations convinced me that the play would resonate with contemporary theatregoers, particularly as Britons reassess their national identity in a post-Brexit, politically unstable and economically volatile world. Thirty years ago, Bill Bryson had set off on his UK odyssey determined to ascertain “for better and for worse” what had changed and what had endured since his first visit here in 1973. I was keen for the stage version of Notes to evoke a similar journey of discovery, allowing its audiences to connect with their past, identify with the present, and consider what the future might bring for them and their small island’s shifting sense of place and purpose in the global village.
Nearing the end of his journey, Bill prophesied how Britain would seem an enigma to historians assessing the second half of the 20th century. One can only speculate how they might categorise our nation during the first quarter of the 21st. “The fact is,” concluded Bill, “that this is still the best place in the world for most things: post a letter, venture out for a drink, visit a museum, go to the bank ...”
How painfully ironic these words seem today. With 115,000 striking postal workers, the wholesale closure of pubs and museums, and high streets on which tattoo parlours and vape shops now outnumber banks, we could be forgiven for starting to mourn the good old days. More optimistically, as we heal and rebuild after the ravages of the last three years, Notes from a Small Island – both the book and (hopefully) the stage adaptation – also reassures us that being British allows us a good deal to be grateful for.
Notes from a Small Island is at the Watermill theatre, Newbury, 3 February to 18 March
