The second double bill of plays inspired by the Staffordshire Hoard is to open at Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic Theatre.
The Staffordshire theatre-in-the-round is presenting 22 plays over a five-week period about the Hoard, the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found.
The Throne is a “warm-hearted comedy from one of the country’s brightest young writers”, Staffordshire-born Frazer Flintham.
It features Cliff who has spent the last 25 years making toilets at Armitage Shanks. He is happy enough until his childhood sweetheart comes back to the village after years down south. He starts to think he should have made a bit more of himself.
Then smooth-talking Gordon makes his move and Cliff has to decide whether to put up a fight for the woman he loves or let his whole future get flushed down the drain.
New Vic artistic director Theresa Heskins directs The Throne which will run alongside Larksong by Chris Bush, winner of the 2014 Perfect Pitch award for musical theatre writing.
Larksong is a “powerful tale of friendship and fate” as a gang of youngsters risk the deadly anger of a king. Mouse and his friends are just ordinary folk. But when they stumble on a band of sleeping soldiers, each carrying weapons more magnificent than anything they could have imagined, their futures suddenly look very different.
The Throne and Larksong, directed by Gemma Fairlie, run at the New Vic from Friday 3 until Saturday 25 July.