David's Marvellous Seminar

When it comes to children's theatre, David Wood is the go-to guy. Chairman of the board (The Rat Pack's influence continues!). The Superman of adaptation, though without the underwear-over-the-trousers look. Basically, if you want a Roald Dahl book turned into an awesome play, this guy will do it, and he'll do it better than anyone. His most recent Dahl work, George's Marvellous Medicine, finished at Richmond Theatre last Saturday having been thoroughly enjoyed by all, and Wood was kind enough to host a seminar the day before to tell us a little about himself and how he goes about adapting Dahl's books.


With a background in acting, it's little surprise Wood has an affinity for the stage, and his extensive back catalogue has seen him referred to as "the national childrens' dramatist" by The Times. On this occasion, he talked about using his depth of experience with childrens' theatre to distill Dahl's stories down to their basic components and then ensure that these essential themes make it into his stage adaptations. Particularly emphasised were the notions of 'justice' and 'subversion', Wood underlining the need to appeal to child's basic sense of fairness and to retain the streak of irreverence and rebellion which runs through Dahl's work. The giant chickens, meanwhile, are emblemic of the magic and surrealism (you and I might call it 'insanity', but in a good way) Wood understands is necessary to keep a child's attention and, perhaps more importantly, to keep the show fun.

Much is made of the effective use of cliff-hangers and ensuring that the audience has something to wonder about during the interval, something to want to come back for. Fade-to-black is out, unless you want the little tykes' attention to fade away as well. What's a good way to stop that from happening? Villains we love to hate: Wood delights in transposing Dahl's despicable antagonists (child-eating giants, greedy farmers, witches with an irrational dislike of pre-pubescents) to the stage. At the same time, he refuses to talk down to his audience: whereas the cinematic adaptation (itself celebrating its 20th anniversary this August) of The Witches gave the end of the story a thoroughly sanitised happily-ever-after, Wood's stage version retains his source's traditional (and far bleaker) conclusion. To his amusement, he once received a letter on this subject, informing him that he had not been true to Dahl's vision in his stage adaptation, an accusation which merely served to prove that the complainant had failed to keep up with their reading...

Affable and enthusiastic, Wood held our attention throughout, taking care to direct any rhetorical questions to the younger members of his audience, all of whom seemed to know a great deal more than I did. He happily answered the barrage of questions thrown in his direction when he had finished, and by the time we were due to shuffle out and get on with our lives, the dramatist had proven again that he can enthrall an audience, with or without a giant chicken.

Rory Thomas is Richmond Theatre's digital media editor and wishes he could remember more.