Nottingham-born BAFTA Award winner Vicky McClure will return to the stage for the first time in 12 years in the 40th anniversary revival of Stephen Lowe’s play Touched at Nottingham Playhouse.
Touched will be the first show of spring 2017 and follows an autumn season which includes the world première of former Nottingham writer John Harvey’s first play—an adaptation of his novel Darkness, Darkness—and Thomas Middleton’s Jacobean play The Revenger’s Tragedy.
The Playhouse’s artistic director Giles Croft said, “Darkness, Darkness provides the heart of a season of revenge dramas that will thrill, entertain and surprise while Touched is a beautifully moving story of longing and loss that provides, in the central role of Sandra, a part that could have been written for Vicky McClure to play.”
The Sweet Vengeance season begins with Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth, a co-production with West Yorkshire Playhouse. Croft directs Shaffer’s 1970 satire of the classic crime genre in which two characters fight mercilessly for power over each other. It runs from 9 until 24 September.
John Harvey is one of the UK’s most well-known crime writers and his most recognisable work is his series of novels featuring the detective Charlie Resnick.
Darkness, Darkness, a co-production with New Perspectives, features Resnick when he is on the verge of retirement. He is persuaded to take on a case after the discovery of the body of a young woman who disappeared during the miners’ strike 30 years earlier. It runs from 30 September until 15 October.
Revenge takes its toll in The Revenger’s Tragedy. Middleton’s black comedy explores the inevitable consequences of taking the law into your own hands. The Playhouse’s associate director Fiona Buffini directs the play which runs from 28 October until 12 November.
Kenneth Alan Taylor will write and direct the theatre’s 2016 panto Aladdin which runs from 25 November until 21 January.
Vicky McClure, who is known for appearing in television series including This Is England, Line of Duty and Broadchurch, will play the lead in Touched, a “powerful and poignant” World War II drama set during the 100 days between VE Day and VJ Day. It looks at the lives of a family of working-class Nottingham women. Directed by Matt Aston, it runs from 17 February until 9 March.
In the Neville Studio, Tony’s Last Tape—based on the diaries of celebrated politician Tony Benn—returns to the Playhouse from 15 until 18 September before going on a national tour.
Nick Wood will adapt Mick Jackson’s Booker Prize shortlisted novel The Underground Man from 22 September until 8 October while the Brothers Grimm tale The Princess and the Frog runs from 8 until 31 December.