Back in September 2018 I was invited to the central London offices of The Roald Dahl Company to discuss my work with “The Twits”. Then, after seeing me in action, the company agreed that they would permit me to tell Roald Dahl’s “The Enormous Crocodile”.
“The Enormous Crocodile” is a brilliantly brutal story which is perhaps pitched toward a slightly younger age group than “The Twits”. It’s all about a greedy crocodile who decides to leave the big, brown, muddy river hoping to find fat, juicy little children to eat. As he heads to town he meets other jungle creatures who are appalled by his secret plans and clever tricks and set out to stop him. Once he reaches the town the crocodile takes on all manner of disguises as he tries to fool the children he meets into becoming his lunch but in the end Trunky the Elephant delivers the crocodile’s just desserts as he throws him into the hot, hot sun where the crocodile sizzles up like a sausage.
I got started on the project in the autumn knowing that I wanted to launch the story around World Book Day and that we were trying to moving house. Roald Dahl is a master storyteller and my first draft of “The Enormous Crocodile” wrote itself with very little manipulation on my part. The story’s quite short with quite a simple structure. Like “The Twits” I feel there are two distinct halves to it; the walk through the jungle and the four clever tricks. This and the fact the crocodile meets so many different animals would become the biggest challenges to the eventual presentation of the story.
By January I had a draft of the story and a completion date – two days before the start of rehearsals! So it fell out like this; the Tuesday before we were due to start rehearsing I was in Derby to visit a school and go over the music with Joey, returning to London on Wednesday. The Thursday was Verity’s birthday (aptly spent at London Zoo) and on the Friday before the Tuesday we moved house. My first day of rehearsals was my first commute from Sussex and a journey that the previous week had taken 30 minutes took 3 hours because of rail problems. After a chaotic week I made it to Roald Dahl HQ and entered the wonderful world of Roald Dahl.
Since meeting The Roald Dahl Company, they have been tremendously supportive of my work and offered not just their rehearsal room but paired me with professional director and dramaturg Amy Hodge (literally just back from opening a play at the Manchester Exchange Theatre and scheduled to work with The National Theatre later in the year). I’m happy to admit that after 10 years of working more or less alone I was a bit nervous about how things might go but I needn’t have worried; in our time together Amy showed herself to be one of the singly most incredible theatre practitioners I have ever met; her input would be as an outside eye, sounding boarding, co-conspirator and confidant and it was such a privilege to breathe air with her for a few days.
So rehearsals started on the Tuesday morning and we had two days (about 12 hours) to create a presentation of the story using the contents of my suitcase. It was a blissfully creative process, sharing ideas, problem solving and picking apart this much loved tale to produce something highly visual and interactive. I have already highlighted the major challenges of the piece; it’s a story of two halves with multiple conversing characters. It was agreed that the two halves of the story would look different. The first half would be me on my own and the second half would include the audience more. Amy helped me to re-evaluate my method of storytelling and out of it came a very simple puppetry which means I can bring several characters alive simultaneously without the need for constantly throwing hats on and off. The end result is clear, playful storytelling.
After two very exciting days we reconvened in Wembley to do a pilot presentation to a public audience. Unlike the pilot I did for Dennis and the Chamber of Mischief last year, this one was very successful. The audience were attentive, they laughed in the right places and at the end there were no negative comments.
It was a fantastic week and whilst I am very excited to have had this opportunity I can’t help but feel a little daunted at the task of trying to get the story seen by as many children as possible. Great storytelling demands to be seen and this really is great storytelling. Over the next few weeks I’ll be able to quietly consolidate the story before a series of public events and festivals later in the year and by then I am sure I will feel much more confident about the story’s future.
So there you have it, how in a very short space of time secret plans and clever tricks have become a reality of real quality. I’m eternally grateful to The Roald Dahl Company, Amy Hodge, Joseph Attenborough and Dan White for this wonderful image. “I love it when a plan comes together” and I look forward to seeing how this plan develops in the coming weeks and months.
The Enormous Crocodile is available to schools, libraries and literature festivals nationwide. For more information contact me.
