A festival of plays inspired by the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found, Noël Coward’s biggest hit and the Northern Broadsides’ production of King Lear and are highlights of the summer season at Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic Theatre.
The Hoard Festival, inspired by the Staffordshire Hoard, has been planned for two years. The theatre says it is “the New Vic’s most ambitious undertaking by far”.
For five weeks, the festival will take over the theatre with 19 new works by some of the country’s leading writers and artists on the main stage, in the studio, in the bar, online and even in the car park.
Two main-stage double bills look at the time the Staffordshire Hoard went into the ground and the time it was discovered.
Unearthed is a documentary-drama by artistic director Theresa Heskins which has also been described as an “archaeological whodunit”. It will be partnered by The Gift by Jemma Kennedy, “an epic of romance and adventure set in the Mercia of the Dark Ages”. They run from 20 June until 25 July.
The second double bill opens with The Throne, a comedy by Staffordshire-born Frazer Flintham. It features a character called Cliff who has spent 25 years making toilets at Armitage Shanks and worries that he might have flushed his whole life down the drain.
It is paired with Larksong by Chris Bush, winner of the 2014 Perfect Pitch award. In a tale of friendship and fate, a group of youngsters risk the anger of a king when they stumble on a band of sleeping warriors. The two plays run from 3 until 25 July.
In the Studio Tranklements, written and performed by Caroline Horton, a solo performance about underdogs and Midlands spirit, runs from 23 June until 4 July while Francesca Millican-Slater’s Gold runs from 15 until 25 July.
The festival also features ten five-minute plays which will be performed at a table in the bar, an audio piece and a community project involving 500 people.
Other summer attractions at the Staffordshire theatre-in-the-round include The Ladykillers by Graham Linehan, a New Vic and Hull Truck production, from 10 April until 2 May, Coward’s Private Lives from 6 until 23 May, King Lear from 27 May until 13 June and David Graham Productions’ Eric in Benidorm from 1 until 12 September.
Full details are available at the New Vic web site.