Keep Smiling Through

Synopsis

Keswick, 1940 - Britain is at war with Germany. Maggie’s life is under invasion too: Gran knitting for England, evacuee lodgers, helping with the war effort - and now a fund-raising concert party! Husband Rob is due home on RAF leave and best friend Peg has just learnt that she’s pregnant - but no such luck for Maggie and Rob... Nostalgia, romance, laughter and tears all feature in this comedy world première from the adapter of the hugely successful The Maid of Buttermere, full of live music, songs and dance from the war years.

Our Review:

5 August 2011

Lisa Evans’ new play, which receives its world première at Theatre by the Lake, focuses on Keswick’s home front during the second world war. It revolves around events in the life of Maggie, a young wife who shares a house with her Gran and tongue-tied evacuee Hilda – her husband’s return from the war on leave, Hilda’s being taken back to Newcastle by her father, a mostly unspoken romance with a ‘doctor’ who turns out to be an imposter.

 It builds to a finale at the town show involving most of the characters, as Maggie, her best friend Peg and Gran perform the ‘Blackout Stroll’. This may bring into your mind variety and the whole show has that feel, with most the performers singing or playing an instrument during the period songs which punctuate the action. These genuine 1940s numbers contrast quite strongly at times with the very contemporary way some of the characters tell the audience exactly what they are f...

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