The spring season at Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic begins with a “spellbinding” production of John Van Druten’s Bell, Book and Candle.
Former New Vic artistic director Gwenda Hughes who directs said, “I’m delighted to be back at the New Vic. It’s always interesting to rediscover rarely performed, once-popular plays like Bell, Book and Candle to see what they have to say to a modern audience.”
The play features Gillian Holroyd whose has an eye for the man living upstairs. She soon has him under her spell. But what begins as an amusing game rapidly becomes devilishly dangerous. Torn between two worlds, Gillian is forced to answer the age-old question: is love always worth the sacrifice?
John Van Druten enjoyed years of West End successes, becoming one of the most acclaimed playwrights of the 1930s, before furthering his theatrical career in America.
The cast features Adam Barlow who has appeared in two New Vic productions, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E Lee’s Inherit the Wind and Bob Eaton’s I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire, both in 2014, Geoffrey Breton, Mark Chatterton who played Peter in Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste Of Honey at the New Vic in 2009, Janice McKenzie, Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations at the New Vic in 2008, and Emma Pallant who appeared as Beth in Stephen Sewell’s It Just Stopped at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond in 2014.
Bell, Book and Candle runs at the New Vic from Saturday 14 February until Saturday 28 February.