Ayckbourn, Northern Broadsides mark New Vic’s 30th

Published: 19 August 2016
Reporter: Steve Orme

Artistic director Theresa Heskins: adapting and directing The Snow Queen Credit: Steve Orme

Two productions by Alan Ayckbourn, the return of Northern Broadsides and an adaptation of a classic children’s tale are highlights of the autumn season at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme.

The theatre, celebrating its 30th anniversary, starts the season with one of the biggest hits of 2012, The Kitchen Sink. Tom Wells won both the Critics’ Circle and George Devine awards for most promising playwright for the work, “an irresistibly funny and huge-hearted play about marriage, families, making ends meet and dodgy plumbing”. It runs from Friday 23 September until Saturday 8 October.

Ayckbourn makes his annual visit to the New Vic with two productions, a revival of his 1987 play Henceforward and his latest offering Alan Ayckbourn’s Karaoke Theatre Company.

Henceforward, which won an Evening Standard award for best comedy, features avant garde composer Jerome who has lost the source of his artistic inspiration, his daughter Geain. She has been taken away by his ex-wife. He hatches a cunning plan to get her back with the help of a deranged android childminder. The play runs from Tuesday 11 October until Saturday 29 October.

Alan Ayckbourn’s Karaoke Theatre Company is a “slick, fast-moving concoction of farce, comedy, drama and melodrama, all topped off with a dash of good, old-fashioned stage magic”. What happens during the performance is largely up to the audience in the show which runs from Friday 14 October until Saturday 29 October.

Northern Broadsides is back in north Staffordshire with J B Priestley’s comedy When We Are Married. It runs from Tuesday 8 until Saturday 12 November.

New Vic artistic director Theresa Heskins will adapt and direct the festive production The Snow Queen, Hans Christian Andersen’s children’s tale of adventure, friendship and bravery. It runs at the New Vic from Saturday 19 November until Saturday 28 January.

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