Skellig flies into the Rose (From Elmbridge Guardian)

Skellig flies into the Rose

11:40am Thursday 26th November 2009

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When David Almond’s first novel, Skellig, was published in 1998, it became an instant children’s classic, beating Harry Potter to the Whitbread Children’s Book Award and winning the prestigious Carnegie Medal.

The book was later chosen in the top ten of Carnegie Medal winners from the first 70 years of the award.

Now the Birmingham Stage Company is bringing a stage version to the Rose Theatre in Kingston, in an adaptation by Almond himself.

He explains: “Skellig is about a boy whose family have moved house and whose baby sister is very poorly.  “At the back of the garage behind his house he finds a creature that he isn’t sure is human.  “It is about the relationship between him and this creature he discovers and also with Mina, the home-schooled girl next door, and his newly born sister.”

Almond comes from a Cath-olic family and the story of Skellig has strong spiritual undertones. However, Almond is keen to point out that the story is firmly rooted in reality.

“It is set in the real world in a house I used to live in in Newcastle,” he says.  “Skellig is perhaps magical, perhaps spiritual, but it is important that it happens on a real street in Newcastle in an ordinary house.  “If there is a spiritual dimension then it is here with us.”

The first line of Skellig came to Almond while he was walking in the street and he has said that the rest of the novel wrote itself.  Turning that story into a play, however, did not come quite so easily.

“The stage adaptation was more complicated,” he says.  “It was more of a construction job to make it fit the stage.  “But, once I was into it, I found that the story and the rhythm of the story fit the stage very well.

“At first, the idea of seeing one of my books turned into a stage or film production is worrying because someone else is going to show it to me.  “But, if you have good actors and a good director, they can help recreate the story.  “It is like taking a second look at the book and it is not my story any more, in that sense. This is a really good production of Skellig.

“Birmingham Stage Company is a great company, very hard working and imaginative.

“It is a full-blooded stage show, it hasn’t been simplified it to appeal to children.” 

Skellig, Rose Theatre, Kingston High Street, December 1 to 5, £7-£24. Call 0871 230 1552 or visit rosetheatre kingston. org for more details.

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