Dennis Potter’s classic drama Blue Remembered Hills comes to Liverpool, as Northern Stage bring this ground-breaking story of children and childhood to the Playhouse from Tuesday 14th to Saturday 18th May.
Almost twenty years after his early death, Dennis Potter speaks to our fractious, changing world with a simple but powerful rhetoric about personal responsibility. Dennis Potter’s charming and profound play captures his expansive humanity, his wicked humour and his fierce intolerance of ordinary cruelty.
The story follows seven children one wartime summer, who play, fool and make merry in the Forest of Dean. However, their childish games, complex friendships and moral dilemmas lead them headlong into sudden and unexpected tragedy. The play is famous for its spirited playfulness and humour that is twisted into a shocking and brutal crescendo.
Blue Remembered Hills started life on television as a Play for Today in 1979, starring Helen Mirren and Michael Elphick. Potter adapted his script into a stage play and it remains one of his most enduring and popular works.
The show will be directed by Psyche Stott, who trained with Northern Stage in 2006/7 as part of the Regional Theatre Young Director’s Scheme. Speaking about Potter, Stott said “His perception of the world and of humanity was finely tuned. In so many ways he was ahead of his time and in so many ways we are only just catching up with his ideas and observations”.
For Northern Stage, Psyche Stott has assisted on productions of Ruby Moon, Our Friends in the North and Son of Man, also by Dennis Potter. Other recent work includes Brian Friel’s Hedda Gabler for B.BC. Radio 4 from the Old Vic production and Calendar Girls (U.K. Tour).
The play features Joanna Holden, who was last seen in Liverpool at the Everyman in Hansel and Gretel (Kneehigh Theatre), and Christopher Price, who was at the Playhouse in Northern Stage’s Oh What A Lovely War. Also in the cast is Tilly Gaunt (A Doll’s House, Northern Stage), who is the daughter of former Liverpool Playhouse Artistic Director Bill Gaunt. They are joined by James Bolt (The Seagull, National Theatre), Phil Cheadle (Far From The Madding Crowd, ETT), Adrian Grove (Stepping Out, Salisbury Playhouse) and David Nellist (Billy Elliott, West End).
Tickets for Blue Remembered Hills are available from the Playhouse Theatre Box office, by telephone on 0151 7094776 or online at www.everymanplayhouse.com. Tickets are priced at £12-£23.