Comedy from Alan Ayckbourn and John Godber, a portrait of life in a Midlands mining village and a Dickens classic will be served up at Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic as part of its 50th anniversary season.
The autumn season at the Staffordshire theatre-in-the-round starts with the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough presentation of Soul Man, written and directed by Chris Monks and based on Verdi’s Rigoletto. It runs from 5 until 15 September.
John Godber teams up with his wife and writing partner Jane Thornton for two stand-alone but interconnected plays Lost and Found from 18 until 22 September.
After its presentation of The Daughter-in-Law in 2009, the New Vic is revisiting the work of D H Lawrence in The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd. Fiona Buffini directs Lawrence’s “rarely performed masterpiece” from 28 September until 13 October.
For its annual visit to the New Vic the Stephen Joseph Theatre Company will be reviving Alan Ayckbourn’s 1970s work Absurd Person Singular from 16 October until 3 November. It will run alongside the world premiere of Ayckbourn’s Surprises which is at the New Vic from 18 October until 3 November.
Deborah McAndrew adapts A Government Inspector from the original play by Nikolai Gogol in a Northern Broadsides presentation from 6 until 10 November.
New Vic artistic director Theresa Heskins will adapt and direct Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol from 17 November until 19 January.
It will not be the only Dickens in the season as BAFTA winner Miriam Margolyes will stage her one-woman show Dickens’ Women at the New Vic on Tuesday, 9 October.