Written and performed by Peter Macqueen, this is a funny, lively diversion from all the madness that surrounds this time of year – if only for an evening. Macqueen played Scrooge in a version of ‘A Christmas Carol’ at Keswick’s theatre a decade ago and has now re-imagined the story of Scrooge – and the background of how and why Charles Dickens wrote his books. According to Scrooge, twisted the truth and used his books to smear and get revenge on those people who did not fund him or disapproved of his racy, drug-fuelled lifestyle. We meet the old man Continue Reading
Mark Green – Cumberland News The Scrooge Diaries
Actor and writer Peter Macqueen has an endearing way of inhabiting the eccentric characters he plays, but even by his standards, the Ebenezer Scrooge of Christmas Carol notoriety clearly holds a special place in his theatrical heart. Macqueen has history of playing the incorrigible miser, notably at the lakeside theatre, and for the last ten years he has contributed a column to the Keswick Reminder under the title of the Scrooge Diaries. However his latest take on Scrooge presents the old boy in a vastly different light and Macqueen, who has both written and is now performing the Scrooge Diaries, Continue Reading
Ross Brewster - Keswick Reminder The Scrooge Diaries
So before anyone gets too carried away with the jollity of Christmas, it’s time to hear the other side of the story from one of its defining Victorian characters. Ebeneezer Scrooge has evidently spent too long skulking in the literary shadows of Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol and he demands centre-stage, and the spotlight, in a one-man show determined to put the record straight. Scrooge was no skinflint, but a pioneering printer who earned Dickens’s wrath when he turned down the chance to publish his work. ‘Frankie’ Fagin and ‘Blind’ Bill Sikes suffered similarly... and don’t get him going about Barnaby Continue Reading
British Theatre Guide
There’s a distinct risk that actor Peter Macqueen has planted a hardy annual of a one-man touring play that might become as difficult for him to shift as the accursed Japanese Knotweed. It plays so delicately and directly to the kind of Studio-sized audience here that you could see it becoming his life's work, rather in the style of the old country house gardener he inhabits as Herbert 'Old Herbaceous' Pinnegar. Mr P was the creation of Gloucestershire novelist Richard Arkell, a character adapted in turn by TV scriptwriter Alfred Shaughnessy, whose work on Upstairs Downstairs evidently attracted him towards Continue Reading
David Upton - British Theatre Guide (View original article) Old Herbaceous
Millican Dalton was a treehugger long before the term was invented. How else would a man, who lived alone in a cave in the Lake District, measure the seasons and nature's age, than by wrapping his arms round the trees each year to gauge their growth? There's that same sense of intimate embrace about this captivating play dedicated to his memory. It's written and performed here by Peter Macqueen, though it might be more accurate to say he inhabits the role, the lifestyle and indeed the mind of this Lakeland eccentric in two hours of gently immersive theatre. Dalton spent Continue Reading
David Upton - British Theatre Guide (View original article) The Professor of Adventure
"The story overflows with warmth, love and pathos which tug the heartstrings…all of this would count for nothing without a good central performance, and that was delivered so well by Peter Macqueen….He managed to be charming, stubborn and witty…it was both touching and funny…and throughout the performance Macqueen managed to show his gardening skills..."
Cumberland & Westmorland Herald (View original article) Old Herbaceous
In 1903 - at the age of 36 - he gave up his office job as a clerk and went to live in a cave in Borrowdale. He continued his spartan outdoor life until his death at 79. His cave still exists but there's no blue plaque, only one line of graffiti left by Dalton which espouses part of his philosophy: "Don't Waste Words, Jump to Conclusions". Actor Peter Macqueen is helping us to remember this eccentric character with a new play, written and performed by Macqueen, currently running at Keswick's Theatre by the Lake, before going on tour through Continue Reading
Alan Cleaver - Cumbria Live (View original article) The Professor of Adventure
"...Macqueen brings an enchanting mix of good humour and pathos to the role… The ease with which he fills this role is probably because he has a secret: Macqueen is a gardener himself. Josie Lawrence and Ainsley Harriet are among his clients and his green fingers ensure he brings a confident air to the performance. As he tells tales, Macqueen potters around the greenhouse taking cuttings, sowing seeds and mixing fertiliser with a dexterity normally only demonstrated by street magicians... The show will undoubtedly conjure up happy memories of listening to Grandad in the potting shed and a more pleasant Continue Reading
Whitehaven News Old Herbaceous
Peter Macqueen might almost have been born to play Millican Dalton, the legendary Lakeland outdoorsman who gave up a job in the city to spend the next years in search of adventure, romance and freedom. He looks the part. Convincingly so when he dons Millican's famous battered Tyrolean hat patched shorts and boots. Even more so with the grizzled, grey beard and the craggy facial bone structure very much in the image of the man who dubbed himself the "Professor of Adventure". Macqueen not only puts in a herculean one-man stint, he also wrote the words for this Studio production Continue Reading
Ross Brewster - Keswick Reminder The Professor of Adventure
"...Not just for gardeners, this is an endearing story set in an old greenhouse in the gardens of a Gloucestershire manor house where you imagine perfect lawns and well tended borders. It centres on the enduring relationship between gardener Herbert Pinnegar and Lady Charteris of the Manor House, an unexpected love story. As Pinnegar tells his stories his hands are always working, potting plants, eating oranges (garden tip included) and drinking tea but it doesn’t detract from what he says – in fact it makes it more real, it makes the audience part of his world. I challenge you not Continue Reading
ITV Border (View original article) Old Herbaceous
"Loneliness isn't about being alone, it's about not having the choice – and that is at the heart of Peter Macqueen's one-man play about the life of Millican Dalton, the Borrowdale hermit. Based on the real life caveman of the Lake District, The Professor of Adventure takes you not only into the cave he calls his home, above Keswick at the start of World War Two, it takes you into the mind of an educated man ahead of his time. Macqueen captures in his lyrical script, the passion and confusion of a man who thought like many the Great War Continue Reading
Cumbria24.com (View original article) The Professor of Adventure
"Peter Macqueen’s simple one-man show is an astonishing performance. He plays 80-something gardener Herbert Pinnegar, reflecting on life as he spends his final days in his beloved greenhouse. This gently humourous, touching play tugs at heart strings and tickles ribs without resorting to cliché. It’s an intimate and beautifully delivered performance, with Macqueen drawing the audience into the gentle world of Herbert and shifting effortlessly from boisterous and light-hearted to quiet and serious; from wistful, lovelorn regret to twinkle-eyed mischievousness. Fussing over pots and cuttings on a simple but beautifully realised set, we’re cleverly drawn into his quiet and charming Continue Reading
News and Star Old Herbaceous
"Peter Macqueen throws a warming comfort blanket round his audience with his touching and gentle portrayal of veteran gardener Herbert Pinnegar in Reginald Arkell’s story of a man looking back over his life and over English rural social history… Old Herbaceous to give him his nickname, is at times charming, crotchety, stubborn and given to flashes of humour… He’s full of little knowing chuckles as he casts his mind back nostalgically. Macqueen, or is it Pinnegar, sprinkles garden wisdom into a tale which engages the audience…one man on the front row nearly got a soaking from the old man’s watering Continue Reading
Keswick Reminder Old Herbaceous