Northern Broadsides, award-winning drama and a classic Lancashire comedy are among the highlights of the spring season at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme.
Deborah McAndrew’s new play for Northern Broadsides, An August Bank Holiday Lark, which is set in rural Lancashire on the eve of World War I, is the first production which runs from Friday 7 February until Saturday 1 March.
Shelagh Stephenson’s The Memory of Water, which “brilliantly mixes hilarity and regret in a moving look at families and childhood memory”, is the next New Vic production.
It won the Olivier Award for best new comedy in 2000 and was voted UK play of the year in 2001.
The Memory of Water runs from Friday 7 until Saturday 22 March.
The New Vic will join forces with Octagon Theatre Bolton and Oldham Coliseum to present Harold Brighouse’s battle of the sexes Hobson’s Choice.
Set in Salford in 1880, it features widowed shoemaker Henry Hobson who spends more time boozing in the Moonraker’s Arms than he does on the family business. So no-nonsense daughter Maggie decides to present her father with a choice.
Hobson’s Choice is at the New Vic from Wednesday 26 March until Saturday 12 April.
The Staffordshire theatre-in-the-round welcomes back London Classic Theatre in April with Joe Orton’s black comedy Entertaining Mr Sloane which will be celebrating its 50th anniversary. The play runs from Tuesday until Saturday, 15 until 19 April.
The John Godber Company and the Theatre Royal Wakefield’s production of Godber’s Teechers will visit the New Vic in April.
The comedy “puts the education system under the microscope in a no-holds-barred look that’s as funny, fresh and relevant as the day it was written”.
It runs at the New Vic from Wednesday until Saturday, 23 until 26 April.
One-nighters at the theatre include Penny Dreadful Productions How to be Immortal on Monday 24 February; and Bob Kingdom in Dylan Thomas: Return Journey on Monday 31 March.