Parkway Dreams: Peterborough Telegraph

Friday night at the Ken Stimpson School, and I was subjected to lessons including history, drama, music, mathematics, and geography, in one impressive Peterborough package. But there was a difference to the normal lessons; for history read Wyndham Thomas and the Development Corporation; for geography, it was Bretton, Werrington, Paston, and Castor and Ailsworth. For music, we loved songs based on the fair city itself, on its expansion, its shopping centre, and ‘The Peterborough Effect'. For mathematics it was the costs and numbers involved in doubling the population of the city across the 60s, 70s and 80s. And for drama, the spectacular and wonderful performance itself - Parkway Dreams, a musical documentary formed from the words of the people who designed it, built it, and lived it.

Eastern Angles theatre group are touring the region with this wonderful production, but its real home is obviously here. Part of the Forty Years On project, researchers went to the National Archives and spent thousands of hours of volunteer work in building this masterpiece. In one two-hour (although it doesn't seem that long) epic, six performers take on roles from Peterborough legend Cllr Charlie Swift and Margaret Thatcher to one of the many families who quit the capital for a new life in the Soke.

The regular commenters on this website might not believe it, but there was a time when people were optimistic about the city, and what it had to offer. Europe's biggest Sainsburys, jobs, modern houses, and a life outside the smog. This social experiment worked, at least partly due to the brilliance of DC general manager Thomas - played very believably by Harry Waller - who changed the city forever but admits he left the project too early.  Rather than a formulaic run-through of what happened, this is a steady blend of slapstick and talking heads; of plans, diagrams and slideshows, and kitchen sink drama as a family struggles to make the right choices for their future.  Key decisions are played out in clever set pieces, headed by the superb Robert Jackson who took on the roles of various famous television hosts from Blankety Blank, Crackerjack and more. I particularly liked how the Bretton boiler saga was treated as a ‘Clanger', complete with penny whistles; you'll have to watch to make sense of it...

The music, composed by Simon Egerton, is a constant joy; ‘It never rains in Queensgate' and ‘Money money money, In a Wyndham's World' stuck with me throughout the weekend.

This was a brilliant, wonderful, touching, show, superbly written by TV scriptwriter Kenneth Emson. The ending might not be to everyone's liking, but overall it is clearly one of the best shows I've seen, answering many of the questions which a non-Peterborian such as myself has puzzled over for years. Even the programme is something to behold.

With GCSEs and A Levels just around the corner I hope that younger people find time to embrace this production, because this is an examination of what made this city - and as far as a history lesson goes, this is top of the class.

John Baker