WWI play to have world premiere in Northampton

Published: 23 August 2014
Reporter: Steve Orme

Regeneration runs for three weeks at Northampton's Royal and Derngate

The world premiere of Nicholas Wright’s stage adaptation of Pat Barker’s World War I novel Regeneration is to be staged in Northampton.

The play is a co-production between the town’s Royal and Derngate and the Touring Consortium Theatre Company. After its opening in Northampton it will go on a nationwide tour.

Set at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland in 1917, the play follows poet and soldier Siegfried Sassoon who has been sent to an institution in an attempt to undermine his public disapproval of the war.

His army psychiatrist, Dr William Rivers, is given the task of returning shell-shocked officers to the trenches. Yet he has become tormented by the morality of what is being done in the name of medicine.

Olivier Award-winning playwright Nicholas Wright’s work includes the National Theatre production of Vincent in Brixton and his adaptation for the National of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.

Royal and Derngate’s former associate director Simon Godwin directs Regeneration which runs on the Royal stage from Friday (29 August) until Saturday, 20 September.

Regeneration will also provide the centrepiece for a wide range of cultural events as part of the theatre's collaboration with Northampton Museum and Art Gallery to commemorate Northampton's contribution to World War I.

Northampton Remembers the First World War encompasses specially commissioned theatre productions, family days, exhibitions and an extensive education programme.

A World War I family day will be held on Saturday (30 August) in and around Royal and Derngate, Northampton Museum and Art Gallery and the Guildhall Courtyard.

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