God’s Own Country

Ross Raisin’s debut novel won acclaim for its lyrical portrayal of rural life on the North York Moors in 2008, and for all you glimpse that in Fine Mess’s monologue version, it doesn’t really suit the stage.

Raisin’s narrator is Sam Marsdyke, a 19 year-old excluded from school, now working on his father’s farm and overseeing the tupping process. When a family from London move in next door, their 15 year-old daughter takes a shine to him – and he, in turn, to her.

Sam’s a familiar literary sort, though: lumbering and unaware of his own strength. It takes a while to spot the clues—in overheard gossip and taunts from locals—but the moment you clock his past, a sexual assault conviction from his schooldays, you know exactly where this is heading.

On the page, that’s fine. Raisin lets you sink into Sam’s accounts of the landscape, farming processes and the erosion of a way of life as metropolitan second-homers grow in number. Onstage, though, plot’s the driver and, in Fine Mess’s adaptation, we’re always one or two steps ahead. While Raisin’s careful deployment of dialect makes for an enjoyable read, onstage, it becomes A.N. Other thick Yorkshire accent.

The one-man form does Anthony Lau’s production no favours either: because Kyle Ross (alternating with Joel Samuels throughout the festival) hops niftily between characters as they talk to one another his performance sits at odds with Sam’s doltishness. Narrator and character never quite combine as they do in the book. Buy that instead.