Derby actor Gwen Taylor will return to her home city this week to appear in Michael Morpurgo’s The Butterfly Lion.
She’ll take to the Derby Theatre stage for the first time in 14 years to play Millie in the play which the venue is producing with New Perspectives Theatre Company and Leicester’s Curve.
New Perspectives’ Daniel Buckroyd adapts and directs Morpurgo’s award-winning novel which is described as a “drama of friendship, separation, and suffering”.
The story features a youngster called Bertie who’s growing up in South Africa and rescues an orphaned lion cub. When he’s sent to a boarding school in England, the cub is sold to a circus. Bertie vows to see his friend again.
The audience travels in time with Bertie and Millie from the early years of the 20th century through the First World War and up to the present day.
The Butterfly Lion runs at Derby Theatre from Wednesday (23 May) until Friday, 8 June.