26 | July 11, 2013 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News
The critical list: more hot tickets Round-up
ɀ A STUNT rider will be wowing at the Kimbolton Country Fayre this Sunday (July 14). Flyin’ Ryan (we presume his real name), will join a dog display team, a Civil war reenactment group and a mobile farm (we’ve been promised giant rabbits, goats and donkeys to feed), plus a Punch and Judy show. There will also be a carousel, classic cars, swing music and dancing – or you could just head to the beer and tea marquee for homemade cake. The fun kicks off at 11am and tickets cost £18 families, £8 adults, £5 concession on the door. ɀ ROOTS folkster Jess Morgan is appearing at the Cambridge Folk Club on Friday (July 12), ahead of the Cambridge Folk Festival later this month. The Norwich born singer-songwriter performs her own stuff (stories in a classic, 1970s style) and is beginning to turn industry heads. BBC Radio 2’s Steve Lamacq said: “Every so often you come across a little gem like this!” She’ll be supported by The Ashby and Jones Band, a country and western, folk and bluegrass duo with a knack for foot tapping tunes. Catch all the action at the Golden Hind on Milton Road, Cambridge. Tickets cost £9 on the door. ɀ ALL aboard for the Haverhill Historic Transport Rally and Road Run on Sunday, July 14! The Town Hall Car Park will be taken over by vehicle fanatics between 10am and 5pm, with more than 150 rare trucks, cars, lorries, buses and military vehicles on show. You’ll be able to grab a ride on an old fashioned open top bus (for free!), and at 11.30am vintage car owners will be off on a mini village road trip. Plus, you can head into the Arts Centre for drinks and archive films. ɀ JAZZ at a garden centre might sound like a strange mix but apparently Scotsdales in Great Shelford reckons it works. Tonight (July 11), the garden centre will be hosting their annual Summer Jazz Evening complete with wine and snacks. From 6pm until 8pm you can settle in for some live music, a glass of something fruity and feel oh so sophisticated while perusing the peonies. Call (01223) 842777 for more details. ɀ PINT-sized buccaneers and mini adventurers with a hearty desire to travel the high seas are in for a treat this weekend. The Cambridge Touring Theatre is bringing its take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic coming of age story, Treasure Island, to East Town Park in Haverhill for an outdoor theatre extravaganza. Expect music, rambunctious antics and feel free to dress up for the occasion. It starts at 5pm on Saturday, July 13 and tickets cost £6.50 from (01440) 714140.
Theatre
King Lear SHAKESPEARE fever is definitely beginning to hit Cambridge. This year’s Cambridge Shakespeare Festival has already kicked off and now The Globe is paying a visit – and it’s bringing Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince with it! Cue a whole lot of 90s kids suddenly taking an interest in the Bard. Currently touring the UK and Europe, and directed by Bill Buckhurst, the outdoor production of King Lear is complete with an Elizabethan style stage and velvety curtains – they do it properly this Globe lot. Hence why they can command the use of the Master’s Garden at Corpus Christi College for the spectacle. For those who weren’t subjected to hours of Shakespeare at school (too many essays have been written on Macbeth for it to ever be enjoyable again: fact), King Lear is Will’s ultimate tragedy. It starts with Old King Lear of
ᔡ King Lear, Cambridge Arts Theatre, The Master’s Garden, Corpus Christi College, Wednesday, July 17 – Saturday, July 27 at 7.30pm. Tickets £20 from (01223) 503333 / cambridgeartstheatre. purchase-tickets-online.co.uk England, ageing and tired of his royal duties, proposing to divide his kingdom between his three conniving, flattering daughters. But, what was a generous idea in theory, in practice throws up cruelty and anguish. Too late Lear realises he has lived by false values and succumbs to madness. The question is, can you ever see anyone truly for what they are? It is the fifth year the Globe Theatre on Tour has visited Cambridge University’s college gardens, so, if you’ve missed Henry V, Anne Boleyn, As You Like It and Hamlet, Lear might be tempting. It might be even more tempting once you discover the Play and punt package the Arts Theatre is offering. Punt down the Cam with a tour guide then settle down under a blanket at Corpus Christie. We’ll be taking snacks.
NOW READ OUR REVIEWS CHECK OUT OUR VERDICT ON ROMEO AND JULIET AT THE SHAKESPEARE FESTIVE ONLINE Visit our What’s On section today cambridge-news.co.uk
Books
The Lost Fens with Ian Rotherham ᔡ The Lost Fens with Ian Rotherham, Topping and Company Booksellers, Ely, Thursday, July 18 at 7.30pm. Tickets £5 – £6 from www.toppingbooks.co.uk
T
HE Fens are the topic of an intriguing talk in Ely next week by author Ian D Rotherham. The professor of environmental geography at Sheffield Hallam University has studied landscape and ecological history for more than 30 years, and admits: “One of my passions is the wetlands. I got very, very interested in Fenlands and Fenland drainage.” Hence his latest book, The Lost Fens: England’s Greatest Ecological Disaster, which explores the factors that led to the drainage of the Fens and what it was like before. “It’s kind of like a whodunit?” he explains. “I wanted to know who did it, why, when they did it and how they did it.” He started by researching historical accounts from travellers who described the people and the landscape, land owners’ records
documenting what they shot and ate, and even some “rather fantastic feast day menus”: “There was one in York for the enthronement for the Arch Bishop of York for example, and we’ve got a list of everything they ate, which is like 400 bitterns, 200 spoonbills and a thousand egrets – all taken from the local Fen.” It’s not only the southern Fens that make an appearance, but
northern Fens too which existed round the Humber but are now “gone from memory”. Ian explains that their ecologies and histories are linked despite the distance. And it’s a funny old history, filled with tales of ordinary people making a living off the waterways, criminals hiding out and disease spreading sickness and prejudice: “The
Fens were always these centres for resistance, for outlaws, for nonconformists, so it was actually a political reason to get rid of them, to drain the land, to turn it to production but for the landowner, not the commoner.” Ian will also be discussing the Fens as they are today. “We’re getting things like the Great Fen Project, and there’s Wicken Fen,” he muses. “But there’s no way we can actually turn this back, you can’t turn the clock back, we wouldn’t want to because the farmland area is very important to people, but there are consequences of what we’ve done. Land is shrinking, sea level is rising… “We need to be aware of what we’ve done and the consequences in the longer term.” He adds: “The other thing I try to do is get people, through the eyes of the people writing in the 1300s and 1400s, into the Fen itself, to visualise what it was like, and I don’t think it was like going to an RSPB or farm trust nature reserve. “It was this vast intractable sluggishly meandering set of rivers with huge areas of wet woodland “It’s almost beyond belief the size of it, it’s about 3-5,000km of wetland and we just can’t conceive that.” But it’s definitely worth a try.