Claybody Theatre To Stage The Premiere Of Deborah McAndrew's New Play SONG OF THE SYTCH This October

Claybody Theatre has announced that this October it will be presenting the world premiere of Song of the Sytch, Deborah McAndrew's new play about secrets and subversion in the dark heart of the Potteries during the Second World War.

 

Directed by Conrad Nelson (the critically acclaimed Claybody Theatre production of The Card, and Pride and Prejudice at the Grosvenor Open Air Theatre), Song for the Sytch will have its world premiere at the Spoke Works in Stoke-on-Trent from 4-14 October.

 

September 1938. Neville Chamberlain has averted another catastrophic conflict in Europe, but there isn't much peace at The Pelican – a pub in a poor part of Burslem known as The Sytch.

 

While a Male Voice Choir practices in the back room, dirty deals are done in the cellars beneath; subversive ideas take root and forbidden love is kindling. As the world hurtles to the brink of war once more, a community finds it must pull together or fall apart.

 

Song of the Sytch's cast will feature Polly Lister (One Man, Two Guvnors, Bolton Octagon and The Wizard of the Oz, Leeds Playhouse), Jack Quarton (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Southwark Playhouse and Amelie, West End) , Eddy Westbury (The Comedy about a Robbery, West End) , Thomas Cotran (The Great Gatsby, Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre, Chester) Victoria Brazier (The Book Thief, Bolton Octagon) and Alyce Liburd (Comedy of Errors (More or Less), Stephen Joseph Theatre and Shakespeare North).

 

The production will be designed by Dawn Allsopp (Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape, Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh) with lighting by Jo Dawson and musical direction by Ashley Thompson (The Snow Queen and Anna of the Five Towns, New Vic Theatre). The play's assistant director is Tim van Eyken.

 

Deborah McAndrew is an award-winning playwright. Her many works include original plays, novel adaptations, and classic foreign language play adaptations for companies such as Northern Broadsides, York Theatre Royal, Hull Truck, Leeds Playhouse, Bolton Octagon, The New Vic Theatre and The Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre, Chester. Her theatre productions include  Theatre and audio for Claybody Theatre including The Card,  The Call, The D Road, Hot Lane, Dirty

Laundry and Ugly Duck. Her recent productions include The Great Gatsby (Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre) and Robin Hood and the Major Oak (Derby Theatre). Her awards include winner of the UK Theatre Award and Manchester Theatre Awards for the Northern Broadsides production of August Bank Holiday Lark. Deborah has worked extensively in television, theatre, and radio. She is best known for her role as Coronation Street regular, Angie Freeman, in the 1990s.

 

Writer Deborah McAndrew said:

“A couple of years ago a local resident brought me something they thought would interest me. It was a silver trophy cup for a music festival, dated 1938. This poignant object that had lain in a cellar for over 80 years instantly connected with a number of themes, characters and ideas that were floating around in my head. The result is a drama about a community facing a dark and uncertain future; universal stories inspired by the people and the musical heritage of Stoke-on-Trent.”

 

Claybody Theatre is a Stoke-on-Trent-based company and charity whose work is inspired by the lives and experiences of local people and presented in found spaces. Founded in 2013 by playwright Deborah McAndrew and director Conrad Nelson, productions include Ugly Duck, Digging In, Dirty Laundry, Hot Lane, The D-Road, The Silver Arrow, The Queen's Shoulders. Claybody's audio drama work includes Dirty Laundry, The Call, starring Mark Benton, and an online choral work, Greenwood Dreams, which won Staffordshire Day Film Festival 2021. Claybody's adaptation of Arnold Bennett's The Card premiered at Fenton Town Hall in June 2022 and was revived by The New Vic Theatre in May 2023.

 

Song of the Sytch will premiere at Spode Works in Stoke-on-Trent from 4-14 October.

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