The Best of What's On

by Helen Wall

It's May at last, perhaps the most beautiful month of the year with bluebells and swallows and terns and all manner of lovely things. Cumbria has gone festival-tastic this month and that old cliche "something for everyone" doesn't do it anywhere near justice.

Keswick, of course, is in the limelight with its nationally - if not internationally - important Jazz Festival at the start of the month and the amazing Mountain Festival in the middle. Ulverston has its Walking Festival, which began last month and PrintFest for the art lover, while the Flag Fortnight overlaps them both from April 28 to May 13, when the town is decorated with specially-made banners and bunting. Haverigg has a Kite Festival for the fun lover and Cockermouth has a Georgian Fair to celebrate its heritage and handsome architecture. Kendal has the Freerange Comedy Festival and the National Theatre Connections youth theatre festival, both at the Brewery. Most of these are well established, but there is also a new kid on the block; Nuts in May. Click on Events Diary on the left for details of when, where and how much.

Keswick Jazz Festival May 9-13 Town centre and Theatre by the Lake

If you love jazz, what could be better than strolling round the delightful Cumbrian town of Keswick, in its magnificent Lake District setting, with a choice of nearly 100 international jazz bands and soloists to listen to in 16 venues. Where do you start to list the favourites who will be banging out traditional jazz? Spats Langham, John Hallam, Tom Kincaid, Brian Carrick, Annie Hawkins, Djangology, Dorine de Wit, Jeff Barnhart, I'm going to have to stop this. And of course when there are so many great musicians together all sorts of mixing and jamming is bound to go on. Regular tickets won't do, you see it all with stroller passes for the whole day; £25 for Thursday, £30 for Friday and £35 for Saturday, while Sunday offers two passes at £30 each, one for the town centre and one for the marquee at the Theatre by the Lake which will have music from 11.30am until 10.30pm.

PrintFest Coronation Hall, Ulverston May 5 and 6

Ulverston's renowned PrintFest is the UK's only artist led printmaking festival, founded in 2001 by artists Judy Evans and Ronkey Bullard. It offers British art lovers a rare chance to see and buy contemporary prints, meet the artists and learn about the little understood art of printmaking.

There will be more than 40 national and international artists exhibited including the festival's 2012 Printmaker of the Year, Kelly Stewart, originally from Australia. Others include former Printmaker of the Year Anja Percival, 2011 Printmakers' Printmaker Angela Harding, Southbank Printmakers from London, Yu Chengyou from China and a number of artists who have had work selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. There is lots of work to love and it is not too pricey to own.

The festival is growing in strength and breadth and this year includes the first Printfest Trail, with work from 26 artists in 18 venues around the town, mostly in the windows of shops and cafes, with exhibitions of more than one artist inside Natterjacks of Queen Street, the Hot Mango in King Street and 6 Benson Street. And of course, the Printfest Trail Map is a work of art in itself, created by Hugh Ribbans, a lino and wood block printmaker with a sense of humour. Original prints of the map are on sale and are a superb memento of Ulverston. A perfect chance to take in all those Ulverston flags too.

Nuts in May Great Clifton, near Workington May 4-6

Alongside Solfest and Kendal Calling, the new Nuts in May music festival has made the Daily Telegraph's 100 top music festivals in Britian from April to September. The founders are Joanne and Alwyn Braniff who have been involved with Solfest for many years and have dreamt about something for Workington for nearly a decade.

It's set in a partly wooded space on the western edge of the village of Great Clifton, a couple of miles east of Workington. Headline artists are Martin Turner's Wishbone Ash, Hazel O'Connor and Nik Kershaw as well as the winner of Sky TV's Must be the Music, Emma's Imagination, Glastonbury favourites The Lost Padres and Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick.

There will be about 90 acts over two open-air stages, four covered venues, and acoustic space, children's area and an organic cafe. The organisers have created a landscaped woodland arena which they promise will be unlike any festival arena you've seen before. Festival-goers can explore woodland paths, while the main stage is built in a tree-lined amphitheatre. If you want to be one of the 4,000 spectators they expect, visit their very good website www.nutsinmayfestival.co.uk to book.

Keswick2Barrow May 12

May brings out the daddy of all charity walks, the nearly-4o-mile Keswick to Barrow, now so famous it's known as the K2B. To cheer on the 2,500 walkers and runners (if you are up early enough) find a spot on the stunningly scenic route. It starts at Rough How Bridge, three miles south of Keswick at 6.30am. Walkers follow the western shore of Thirlmere where the road hugs the lake, then over Dunmail Raise and down through the beautiful villages of Grasmere and Elterwater. Leaving Grasmere via Red Bank takes walkers over the third highest point on the walk and on to the eastern shore of Coniston Water, then through Nibthwaite and on to Lowick where the Red Lion is popular stopping-off point.

The highest point, surprisingly, is still to come as walkers climb Kirkby Moor with stunning views from the Duddon Estuary on one side to Morecambe Bay on the other. At last it's downhill to Marton and from here, through Dalton-in-Furness to the finish at Hawcoat Park Sports Club on the edge of Barrow-in-Furness your support and applause would be really appreciated. The first runners are expected home from 9.30am onwards, then it's all day as the more and more tired limp home.

Windermere Marathon May 20

If a 40-mile walk wasn't enough, on the following weekend it's the Windermere Marathon, voted the second most popular in the country with good reason as there can be nothing more delightful than running a circuit of England's largest lake, taking in Beatrix Potter's favourite lake, Esthwaite Water, for good measure. About 1,000 runners will start at Brathay Hall (LA22 0HP) at the north-east tip of the lake at 9.30am and the B5286 Hawkshead to Graythwaite road will be closed from 10am until 11.30am. The hall will host a family fun day from 11am until 4pm with canoeing, a climbing wall, a bouncy castle and circus skills workshops for children and a jazz band for the grown-ups. A barbecue, beer tent and teas will keep everyone fed, or take your own picnic. The day is free, but if you want to park on the site it's £5.

Watch out for the Brathay 10 in 10. While the wimps are just running a marathon (ha!) 18 runners will be completing their 10th marathon in 10 days. They will be wearing a distictive vest, which will command an extra cheer as they arrive home. Some people just can't help showing off.

And as May slips into June there will be the Black Combe Walking Festival, Ireby Music Festival and Keswick (where else?) Beer Festival all starting on the 1st.

Theatre by the Lake May 22 to November 10

A major part of Cumbria's cultural life is the Theatre by the Lake at Keswick, Derwent Water being the lake in question. The last theatre to be built in Britain in the 20th century, it has been an outstanding success since it opened with a Main House of nearly 400 seats and a Studio seating 100. More than 130,000 people saw its productions last year, an amazing achievement considering that in the year before it opened 20,000 people went to the theatre in Keswick and that was considered a healthy number.

Not only is it an artistic success, it is also a financial one, generating more than eighty percent of its annual turnover through ticket sales, ice cream, the bar and suchlike. Most theatres in this country only manage to bring in about 50 percent or less and rely heavily on public funding. The core activity is a carefully chosen set of six plays which run from May to November, three in the Main House and three in the Studio. About a dozen actors are brought in for the season and each takes a part in two of the plays, building up a strong sense of community and commitment to the shows.

The six plays are always a reliable mixture of classics, comedies and something new which has proved popular with audiences for more than a decade, and each season it's always exciting to hear what the theatre is going to do this year.

The first two for 2012 are about to open: Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce, a comedy about marriage set in three bedrooms, and Henrik Ibsen's masterpiece A Doll's House, adapted by Bryony Lavery in the Studio.

Bedroom Farce is followed in the Main House by Dry Rot by John Chapman, one of the famous farces staged by Brian Rix at London's Whitehall Theatre in the 1950s.

The final Main House production is an adaptation by Neil Bartlett of Great Expectations, the theatre's contribution to the nationwide Charles Dickens bicentenary celebrations. The Guardian newspaper said of this adaptation: "Bartlett keeps the action flowing, but not so quickly as to leave the audience wondering what the Dickens is going on."

The next play in the Studio is Colder Than Here, the regional premiere of a very funny and heart-warming play by Laura Wade. At the centre of the action is Myra, a wife and mother who, with frank and wry observations, tries to unite her family as she prepares her own green funeral.

The final Studio play will be the world premiere of Roma and the Flannelettes: A Love Like Yours by Richard Cameron. The play was commissioned by Theatre by the Lake and has been developed in workshops by director Stefan Escreet. It is set in a women's refuge in South Yorkshire, a contemporary story told with compassion, warmth - and lots of Tamla Motown music.

Most booking can be done online and at the last count there were more than 60 different prices for a seat at these plays, but don't criticise too much, think of it as the theatre trying to shave a pound off here and there to help out cash-strapped theatregoers. We have detailed the main prices as clearly as we could in our events listing section and there is also £1 off for 10 or more booked together for the same show and reductions for all six plays booked at once. You can get that even cheaper if you go in the less busy times of the season, known as the mini season. And then there is the £5 ticket for all under 26-year-olds every Friday. The special ofers can only be booked through the box office. Oh yes, and there could be a £1 booking fee (like most places these days) plus a 70p charge if you have your tickets posted out. But highly in their favour is the fact that students and under 16s get in for a genuine half-price, unlike most venues which only knock off a nominal pound or two. The Kirkgate Centre at Cockermouth, ten miles down the road, is another venue with a real half-price for children, so if you are in that area you can have more family treats at the theatre.