The return of an old favourite, the celebration of a Staffordshire legend and a classic drama are included in the summer season at Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic Theatre.
Andrew Pollard and Michael Hugo will reprise their roles of Phileas Fogg and Passepartout in Laura Eason’s adaptation of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days which returns to the theatre-in-the-round after playing there in 2013 and 2014.
Directed by New Vic artistic director Theresa Heskins, the “action-packed escapade” will run at the theatre from Friday 23 June until Saturday 8 July before setting off on a national tour.
Before that, the New Vic celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of Stoke-on-Trent’s greatest literary legends, Arnold Bennett, with a new adaptation of his novel Anna of the Five Towns. Adapted by Deborah McAndrew and directed by Conrad Nelson, the play tells the love story of a spirited young woman, set against the backdrop of life in the Potteries. It runs from Friday 26 May until Saturday 17 June.
The season begins with the Original Theatre Company’s production of Torben Betts’s comedy Invincible. It tours to Newcastle-under-Lyme from Tuesday 4 April until Saturday 15 April.
Peter Leslie Wild who directed Brendan Murray’s Seeing the Lights in 2015 and Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E Lee in 2014 at the New Vic returns to direct Frederick Knott’s masterpiece Dial M for Murder. It runs from Friday 28 April until Saturday 20 May.
Theresa Heskins said, “the New Vic is a local theatre with a national outlook, and we want our work to look both inwards and outwards. Hence a play about economically pressured southerners downsizing to the north, a new piece to commemorate a cultural icon and an adaptation by an American woman of a play written by a Frenchman about a Brit travelling the world.
“The New Vic’s biggest national tour, Around the World in 80 Days, is a celebration of difference together with a reminder of what unites us, all told in a joyous piece of theatre which appeals to adults and children, English speakers and non-English speakers, theatregoers and non-theatregoers alike. I’m delighted we will get to share this with our audiences, and audiences all over the country, this year.”