Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion (7 page)

'Look here,' said Mrs Fortescue-Brown. 'It's not as easy as it looks saying all those lines. If you're so smart why don't you come down here and give it a try?'

Nanny Piggins hopped out of her seat.

'All right, I will,' she said. She ran down to the front of the theatre and leapt onto the stage. Mr Green dropped his copy of the play and hurried away. He did not want to be known to have a working relationship with a pig. Nanny Piggins scooped up the text and found the right page.

'When you're ready,' said Mrs Fortescue-Brown.

'I'm always ready,' said Nanny Piggins.

'Then begin,' said Mrs Fortescue-Brown.

Nanny Piggins did not need to be told twice. She immediately launched into Hamlet's famous speech.

Now reader, this is a hard part for me as an author, because this is where I have to describe Nanny Piggins' performance. And how do you describe perfection? Suffice to say that never before, in the four hundred years since
Hamlet
was written, have those words been spoken so beautifully. Being such a gifted performer, Nanny Piggins instantly had the whole audience enthralled – she made them think, she made them laugh, she made them cry, she made them want to call their mothers as soon as they got home – so that when Nanny Piggins uttered the last syllable, everyone in the theatre (except Mr Green) leapt to their feet and burst into applause.

'That was brilliant, breathtaking, awesome!' gushed Mrs Fortescue-Brown as she pumped Nanny Piggins' trotter up and down and slapped her on the back.

'I know,' said Nanny Piggins truthfully.

'You have to accept the lead role,' said Mrs Fortescue-Brown. 'We need you to play Hamlet.'

'What?!' exploded Mr Green, 'But she's a woman!'

'So,' said Mrs Fortescue-Brown. 'Men played women all the time in Shakespeare's day.'

'And she's a . . . she's a . . . (Mr Green found it hard to say the following words.) She's a pig!' he hissed.

'The play is called Ham-let,' said Nanny Piggins. 'I assumed it was about a pig. It's not called Man-let, is it?'

'Good point,' said Mrs Fortescue-Brown, turning to her assistant. 'Make a note to mention that in all the publicity.'

So Nanny Piggins, the children and Mr Green returned home. Mr Green sulked the whole way because he had only been given the part of second tree from the left (and first tree from the left was being played by a sheet of cardboard).

As soon as they got home Mr Green locked himself in his study so he could work on the portrayal of his character. He had a lot of important creative decisions to make – oak or cedar? Evergreen or deciduous? It would take hours.

Meanwhile Nanny Piggins went into the living room and found a comfortable seat so she could begin reading
Hamlet
.

Before we go on I should explain something – Nanny Piggins had worked in the circus for many years, where she had performed in five shows a night, seven nights a week. As a result, she had never had the opportunity to attend the theatre herself, which meant she had never seen any of Shakespeare's plays. So when she began reading
Hamlet
she was utterly shocked.

'But this play is not written in English!' Nanny Piggins exclaimed in horror. 'There's all these strange words like "foresoothe", "egad" and "prithee" written through it. Is that from some Polynesian dialect I'm not familiar with?'

'No, it's English,' Samantha assured her. 'It's the type of English everyone spoke four hundred years ago when Shakespeare wrote the play.'

'Really?' said Nanny Piggins, not believing that anybody would actually talk such gobbledegook just because they had been dead for four centuries.

Nanny Piggins' disapproval did not end there. She had only been reading a few more minutes when she became so appalled, she leapt to her feet and threw the play on the floor in disgust.

'Piffle!' exclaimed Nanny Piggins, wanting to say something much worse.

'What's wrong?' asked Derrick.

'Hamlet,' declared Nanny Piggins, 'is a very, very bad man.'

'What has he done?' asked Michael curiously.

'He was rude to his mother!' said Nanny Piggins disapprovingly.

The children gasped. They knew Nanny Piggins did not approve of young men being rude to their mothers.

'Just because he is Prince of Denmark does not give him the right to speak to her that way,' ranted Nanny Piggins. She then picked up the play and kept reading, wanting to find out if his mother would get fed up and bite Hamlet's leg.

But Nanny Piggins was soon distracted by other fundamental faults in Shakespeare's great work. 'Tsk tsk tsk,' said Nanny Piggins as she avidly read on.

'What is it?' asked Derrick.

'This play is very violent,' said Nanny Piggins.

'You like violence,' Michael reminded her.

'Of course, everyone enjoys a good sword fight,' said Nanny Piggins. 'But there are so
many
sword fights. This Shakespeare fellow needs a good editor. Someone to tell him to swap one or two of these sword fights for pie fights. That would be a lot more fun. And you would lose less characters that way.'

As Nanny Piggins approached the end of
Hamlet
, tears began to trickle down her face, then she started to sob, and finally she began to wail loudly.

'What's wrong?' worried Boris, rushing to give his sister a big hug.

'It's the ending,' said Nanny Piggins. 'It's so awful.'

'How awful?' asked Derrick.

'It's worse than the episode of
The Young and the Irritable
where Bethany and Rock get married on that Caribbean cruise ship with the bomb in the engine room.'

The others were astonished.

'How can anything be worse than episode 3791 of
TYATI
?' asked Samantha. 'That is the saddest program on television ever.'

'The producers had to bring back six characters from the dead because they had so many complaints from viewers,' added Derrick.

'
Hamlet
is worse than that,' said Nanny Piggins definitely as she finished the last page of the play and closed the book. 'Well, that's settled it. If I am going to star in this production I will just have to rewrite the play.'

'Can you do that?' asked Samantha. From everything Samantha's English teacher had said, Samantha had come to believe that the words of Shakespeare were objects of sacred art – like Leonardo da Vinci's paintings, Michelangelo's sculptures or Jamie Oliver's cookery books. They were something that should be in a museum and only be viewed from behind a red velvet rope.

'Of course I can,' said Nanny Piggins. 'I have a pen, don't I? And I'm only going to improve it. I'm sure if Shakespeare were alive today he would be grateful for my help.'

And so Nanny Piggins got out a pen, ten kilos of chocolate (for inspiration) and set to work improving
Hamlet
. She wrote all afternoon, all night and into the next morning. The children even went to school so Nanny Piggins could have time to write (and Derrick could present his Marco Polo research). When they returned home they found their exhausted nanny slumped on the sofa fast asleep, clutching a highly annotated copy of
Hamlet
.

Later that day, when they arrived at the first rehearsal, things did not go quite as Nanny Piggins had imagined. Nanny Piggins had expected Mrs Fortescue-Brown to be eternally grateful when she presented her new improved version of
Hamlet
. But, instead, Mrs Fortescue-Brown immediately quit in disgust and stormed off in a huff because she expected everyone from the cast to rush after her and beg her to come back (which just goes to show how silly some people's expectations can be).

The problem was, the cast soon read Nanny Piggins'
Hamlet
and agreed it was much better, although their judgement may have been compromised. Nanny Piggins had brought along two dozen large chocolate cakes, whereas Mrs Fortescue-Brown had only brought a small bowl of carrot sticks. It was obvious who had the upper hand. Nanny Piggins was immediately elected the new director.

In the weeks that followed, Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children had a wonderful time rehearsing
Hamlet
with The Amateur Theatre Society. The children learnt so much, such as how to look even more beautiful than usual with the aid of half a million dollars worth of professional lighting; how to not really kill each other when having a pretend sword fight; and how to tell off your uncle if you think he's poured poison in your father's ear.

So when Mr Sriskandaraja caught Derrick climbing out of a window during a particularly boring poetry lesson and set him the punishment of writing an essay on the themes of
Hamlet,
he was surprised to get back a brilliantly insightful essay revealing Derrick's subtle and complex understanding of the psychoanalytical issues in the Bard's great work.

The big night of the first performance soon arrived.

'Are you nervous, Nanny Piggins?' asked Samantha.

'Oh no,' said Nanny Piggins. 'I just feel bad for all the other playwrights who are going to be put to shame as soon as the public sees my masterpiece.'

'Don't you mean Shakespeare's masterpiece?' reminded Michael.

'I suppose he had something to do with it,' muttered Nanny Piggins begrudgingly. 'I have kept some of his original character names, but really, the more I think about his version the more I wonder how he ever got away with it.'

The auditorium was jam-packed. Even all the standing room at the back of the theatre was sold out. Mrs Fortescue-Brown was there with all her friends, ready to hate the play and enjoy complaining about it at length. All the local Shakespeare lovers had arrived (both of them). All the pig fans were there (a surprisingly large group) who were interested to see how a pig would interpret the role. And finally there were the theatre subscribers, people who bought the tickets long in advance and so felt they had to go even though they did not want to.

When they had all found their seats and the house lights were dimmed, everyone in the audience was fully expecting to be totally bored (some of them were even hoping to get in a nap and had brought along neck pillows). So they were totally shocked when, as soon as the curtain opened, they were showered with the sparks of a thousand fireworks and deafened by cannon fire, while a giant bear shot down from the back of the theatre on a flying fox, screaming, 'Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself!'