There’s drama afoot in the world of youth hostelling…and where better to tell the story than in one of the country’s most spectacularly sited hostels.
A new play, Best Foot Forward, will be staged at Ambleside YHA in May, bringing music and humour to the tale of a fictional hostel, Pearling Manor.
The Manor has been threatened with closure to make way for a new golf club, and the warden is determined to rally the troops and fight the plans.
Best Foot Forward is a production from the Yorkshire-based Mikron theatre company who spend some of their time touring the canals and waterways of England in a narrowboat, “reaching audiences that other companies cannot”.
So they are used to performing in unusual venues and director Marianne McNamara will be taking this show to church halls and pubs as well as the YHA.
Best Foot Forward is written by Maeve Larkin who spent her younger days happily hostelling, so she’s brought some of her own experience of the YHA into the drama.
“We know that movements have to evolve to survive,” she says. “Our hero warden Connie has a heart as big as her rucksack and takes us on a journey through the YHA’s past in the hope of securing its future.”
As Connie says:
“Through thickets and thin we’ve managed to keep
Our promise of somewhere cheap to sleep
If that’s threatened we must defend it
Looking to the past in order to transcend it”
Ambleside YHA manager Damian Parker said: “This is a very funny and delightful story, and we know that it will be loved by our guests staying here. But the play is open to everyone….just turn up on the night for a very entertaining show.”
Best Foot Forward is at Ambleside YHA on Thursday May 11. There’s no need to book; a pay-what-you-will collection will be taken after the show.
For more information contact YHA Ambleside on 015394 32304
Ambleside YHA: photo by Steve Ashworth, Lake District Images
northwestnewsandfeatures.wordpress.com 