Mary Norton’s family adventure The Borrowers will be the Christmas 2014 production at Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic Theatre.
New Vic artistic director Theresa Heskins, who was behind Dodie Smith’s The Hundred and One Dalmatians in 2013 and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland in 2011, has adapted and directs The Borrowers.
She said, “bringing this story to the stage will be no mean feat, but, after making Alice shrink and grow in Wonderland and chasing 101 spotty dogs across England, I'm looking forward to surprising and delighting audiences with our ingenious solutions to the challenge.”
The production will feature “magical storytelling, original music and inventive staging” as audiences delve into the Borrowers’ hidden world.
The Borrowers live happily in a little home under the floorboards of a quiet old house. But when young Arrietty gets itchy feet and decides to go exploring, their secret is out and nothing will ever be the same again.
The Borrowers cast features Shelley Atkinson who was in Zosia Wand’s Hansel and Gretel and More Tales From The Forest at The Dukes, Lancaster; Victoria Brazier, Olive in Red Ladder's We're Not Going Back at the Gala Theatre, Durham; Richard Colvin who appeared in the Northern Broadsides production of A Government Inspector; New Vic regular Michael Hugo who had roles in Around the World in Eighty Days, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan; Polly Lister who played Cruella De Vil in The Hundred and One Dalmatians at the New Vic and Mam in Lee Hall’s Cooking With Elvis at Derby Theatre in 2013; Katy Phipps who was in The Wind in the Willows at the Royal, Northampton; Nicholas Tizzard who appeared in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House at the New Vic in 2010; Ali Watt, another returning to north Staffordshire after being in The Hundred and One Dalmatians; and recent graduates Huw Blainey, Vanessa Schofield and Jonathan Charles.
Joining the professionals will be a team of 24 young performers from the local community.
The Borrowers runs at the New Vic from Saturday 22 November until Saturday 31 January.