Booking info

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Blue Remembered Hills

Performance date - 12/03/10
Performance times - 2pm & 8pm

The New Century Theatre Company presents Dennis Potter's disturbing play on childhood.

Dennis Potter’s brilliant and often hilarious evocation of war-time childhood games, rivalries, jealousies – and tragedies – is brought to life in an exciting and original production by New Century Theatre Company, one of the West Midlands’ most dynamic and innovative theatre companies. This apparently simple tale relates the activities of seven-year-olds on a summer afternoon. Willie tags along as burly Peter bullies Raymond and is challenged by fairminded John. Audrey is over-shadowed by Angela's prettiness and wreaks her angry frustrations on the boys. All of them gang up on the terrified `Donald Duck' who, abused by his mother and ridiculed by his peers, plays his own dangerous game of pyromania.

In a unique twist, the children’s roles are acted out by a cast of adults. The original ground-breaking television production featured Helen Mirren and Colin Welland.

You can also book direct with OxBoffice on 0845 680 1926 or book on-line clicking the following links for each performance - 14.00. 20.00

The performance lasts 1 hour, without an interval

New Century Theatre Company

The New Century Theatre Company came into being on the first day of the year 2000. It is the brainchild of Bill Bowen and his daughter, Jennifer Rigby.

The Company started with two aims; to bring live, professional theatre to the towns and villages of the West Midlands and North Wales; and to provide employment opportunities for up and coming actors who need to find the roles that convince audiences and casting agents of their talents.

The Company has established a loyal fan-base at many of their regular venues; they return each year because they know they are guaranteed an evening of sparkling Midlands talent!

From 2010 NCTC will be extending it's repertoire by touring texts that are used in both GCSE and A-Level examinations (in Performing Arts, Drama and English). This new venture will see the company performing and running workshops in schools and colleges as well as at some of their regular theatre venues. This is an exciting development for the company, which they hope to extend their touring season, so do keep an eye out for up-dates!

NCTC is also establishing a reputation for providing high quality, well researched and structured workshops. These range from Early Years Creative Play Workshops to exam specific workshops relating to texts currently on tour. Details of NCTC’s workshop program can be found on their website.

Dennis Potter and Blue Remembered Hills

First broadcast on 30 January 1979 by BBC1 (Play for Today) Blue Remembered Hills remains one of Dennis Potter's best-known plays, and has gained popularity through the many stage productions.

It is 1943, in the West Country, with war in the air and the world of adults still largely a mystery. The different children have different fears and temperaments. They tease, play, argue, chase a squirrel. It is still a world of considerable innocence, but innocence comes tumbling down in an awful climax.

"The loss of Eden is experienced by each and every one of us as we leave the wonder and magic and also the pains and terrors of childhood .... . Whereas the discipline is imposed by an adult, when children are amongst themselves, it's all continual fidget and movement, exploration, speculation, wonder. In a sense to lose that is to lose Eden, is to be expelled from the Garden." (Potter, from 1990 Interview with John Cook)

Potter described Blue Remembered Hills as one of his most naturalistic dramas, simple in form and content where the children are not allowed eloquence, obvious introspection, rhetoric or even the useful consolations (and normal dramatic lie) of properly consecutive thought.

However, this "naturalism" is counterfeit, as we might expect from Potter. First, he introduces what he refers to as a "ripple" on the surface of this naturalism: he has all the child characters played by adult actors. Second, he chooses to utilise adult bodies as he sees them as a "magnifying glass but also ... as the seismograph which could more truthfully measure the quakes and tremors of childhood's emotions" (Potter 1984), and disturbs us with the savagery of their behaviour - much as Golding did with Lord of the Flies.

Childhood, in Blue Remembered Hills, is not an innocent and romantic memory for Potter but rather a deeper insight into the way the human mind and emotions work - at whatever age.