New Vic announces autumn season for 40th anniversary year

The New Vic will collaborate with acclaimed theatre company Not Too Tame to produce a radical staging of Romeo & Juliet, which ages up Shakespeare's iconic lovers to their forties. It will star award-winning comedian Russell Kane in his stage debut as Romeo, and be directed by Not Too Tame Artistic Director Jimmy Fairhurst.

The stage premiere of Gladstone Girls, written by Stoke-on-Trent born Academy Award winner Rachel Shenton (The Silent Child, All Creatures Great and Small) , was originally conceived as a podcast by Slick Films, and will follow a group of female pottery workers in the Potteries trying to protect their cherished 'Curl Friday' factory tradition.

Finally, the New Vic will also revive its 2014 production of Mary Norton's beloved classic, The Borrowers, adapted and directed by New Vic Artistic Director Theresa Heskins (Olivier award-winning The Worst Witch, Marvellous, The Snow Queen). The Borrowers has become one of the New Vic's most popular Christmas productions of the last forty years.

New Vic Artistic Director Theresa Heskins said: “I’m delighted that in our 40th anniversary year, we’re announcing a programme that will showcase our core values – that everyone should have access to great theatre; that local talent should be prized and nurtured; that young people’s first experiences of theatre should inspire them with a lifetime’s love for it."

Romeo & Juliet will run from 17th September to 10th October 2026, Gladstone Girls from 6th to 27th February 2027, and The Borrowers from 13th November 2026 to 23rd January 2027.