A production which was nominated for best musical in the TMA regional theatre awards more than 20 years ago is to be revived in north Staffordshire.
Bob Eaton’s play I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire! was inspired by the stories of the Roses of Swynnerton, the women who worked at a Staffordshire munitions factory.
It was first staged at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1990, was reprised in 1991 and 1994 and is to be dusted off again at the theatre-in-the-round.
The play is set in September 1939. The lives of Stoke’s Beresford family are changed forever. With brother Harry off in the army and Dad building Anderson shelters, 17-year-old Lily is called up for war-work in a munitions factory, the most dangerous job on the home front.
Lily learns the lessons of life, love and loss, meets happiness and tragedy and looks forward to the end of the war and the hope of a new world.
Conrad Nelson, who directs, says, “Almost 70 years on, the extraordinary service of these Swynnerton Roses and the work of other munitions workers across the country remains largely unrecognised.
“Bob Eaton’s play captures the clandestine world of these women, their camaraderie and spirit and the music and song that rang out from factory floor and canteen.”
Ten actor-musicians will take to the stage. They include New Vic regulars Angela Bain (Alecky Blythe’s Where Have I Been All My Life? and Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd), Hannah Edwards (The Hundred and One Dalmatians, A Christmas Carol and Alice in Wonderland) and Anthony Hunt (The Hundred and One Dalmatians).
I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire! runs at the New Vic from Friday (2 May) until Saturday 24 May.