Tales of the unexpected...

A new year began with a very pleasant surprise - writing success! To receive an email on New Year's Eve telling me that I'd won a short story competition was a wonderful little moment, with the added bonus that the story will eventually be appearing in print - my name in a real book. That's next year's Christmas presents sorted out then - 20 copies of the Spinetinglers anthology.

And then last Friday night I found myself performing a poem, in front of an audience of about 30 poets and their groupies, in the delightfully quaint surrounds of the Tea Box in Richmond. Now if you'd told me a few months ago that I'd be doing this I'd have probably laughed, but having been introduced to the eccentric world of live poetry by a friend, I felt suitably inspired to have a go at a medium that I previously thought was much too challenging for me. The unexpected indeed, and all the better for it.

All of which brings me, in nicely tortuous fashion, to Twisted Tales, currently in previews at the Lyric in Hammersmith. Following his success with Ghost Stories, Jeremy Dyson has turned to the short stories of Roald Dahl for inspiration. These stories, which I devoured when I was about 13, were of course previously adapted into the TV series Tales of the Unexpected. It's a series which to be honest has not worn well, and is probably best remembered for the sight of Timothy West turning into a giant bee, but the theme tune and opening credits are imprinted on the brain of anyone who was of a certain age in the 1980s.

In conversation with Simon Stephens of the Lyric before the show, Dyson said that he (wisely) had not rewatched the TV shows when penning this stage adaptation of five of Dahl's stories. Incidentally I think I want to have a loan of Jeremy Dyson's professional life - he spends his time hanging out with fellow geeks and writing for TV, stage and his own anthologies of short stories; his next project is a film about Alfred Hitchcock. It's got to beat sitting in an office anyway.

Like Ghost Stories there is a framing sequence, and Dyson has used an existing Dahl story, 'Galloping Foxley', as a means of accommodating the other tales. Although a neat idea this doesn't work quite as well as it could with some of the links to the stories being handled a little clumsily and Twisted Tales lacks the overall narrative coherence that Ghost Stories exhibits. However, the stories themselves are well-adapted with some nice moments of tension and excellent acting from a small but versatile cast. Of course I already knew what to expect from the twist endings but I don't think this dented my enjoyment of the play. The evening does come to a somewhat uncertain end however, with the finale of 'Galloping Foxley' being handled (as in the original story) perhaps a little too ambiguously, and the audience were unsure when to clap for the curtain call.

Overall, though it's a very entertaining play, and as Dyson confirmed pre-show, a few tweaks will be made here and there before it opens. I would be intrigued to see it again to see how the writing process continues in response to the audience - an opportunity unique to the threatrical medium.