Truckers (tour)

Hollywood film factory Dreamworks has acquired the movie rights to Terry Pratchett’s children’s novel Truckers, but before Steven Spielberg homes in on the nomes, adapter Bob Eaton brings it, faithfully and with wit intact, to the stage. Not entirely to the stage,
however, as director Rob Swain – catching, perhaps, the three-screen-set
virus drifting up the road from the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds – has his players interacting not just with one another, but with images and sequences on film.

But first, nomes. Not gnomes, which a programme note describes as “very
different and most often found in gardens sitting by the edge of artificial
pools”, whereas nomes are four inches high, “a cross between a sumo wrestler
and a brick wall on legs”. A dwindling band of them, sick of the predatory
attentions of foxes, haul themselves up into the back of a wagon at a
motorway service station. With them – just – goes the Thing, a black box
which is the fount of all knowledge and which has accompanied them since they
arrived on this planet from…er…”home”, to where it is supposed to help
them return.

For the moment, however, our expeditionary band are delivered into the
loading bay of Arnold Bros (est 1905), a department store which proves to
have thousands of nomes of its own living beneath the floorboards. Whilst
acknowledging the existence of multiple departments in the universe, the
store nomes are unable to conceive of an “outside”, having been brought up to
believe in “All Things Under One Roof”. Only when it becomes clear that
Arnold Bros is to be closed down, do they accept the outsiders’
mission to lead them out to a promised land.

“The important thing about
being a leader,” the old nome Torrit tells Masklin as he passes on the
generational baton, “is not being right or wrong, but being certain.” And so
it comes to pass that they take over a huge delivery lorry, fill it with
nomes and contrive, largely by semaphore, to start it and drive it out of the
store. We leave them, after a predictably hairy ride, parked up on an
airport runway, planning to hi-jack an airliner for the next part of their
journey home. Nobody, you see, has ever told them that anything is impossible.

Truckers is the first story in Pratchett’s Bromeliad trilogy, and no doubt
Diggers and Wings will soon arrive on stage as sequels. The present
production is not comfortable in its integration of live action and film,
though the cue-ing will presumably bed in and leave fewer indeterminate
blackouts. Still, the piece could gain immeasurably by being played as a
piece of physical theatre, with actors plying their authentic trade in place
of this clumsy technical literalism. As it is, the acting, particularly
Rosalind Paul as Masklin’s feisty side-kick Grimma, is generally lively and
enthusiastic, though one could ask Matthew Bowyer‘s Masklin to be more the
thrusting leader.

Truckers is pitched at five years upwards. Sitting beside me, Leo Beecroft (aged 12) assured me it was “great”. Okay by me.

– Ian Watson (reviewed at Harrogate Theatre)