Horrible Histories: Frightful First World War & Woeful Second World War
World war is heading to The Lowry….
The Lowry, Tue 10 – Sat 14 February 2009
Press Night: Tue 10 February, 7pm
From the brutal Blitz to the front line, Terry Deary’s Woeful Second World War and Frightful First World War, come to life with 3D special effects at The Lowry next month.
Woeful Second World War tells the story of two children, Alf and Sally, who get evacuated to darkest Wales, away from the damp shelters and nightly bombings of their home city – only to encounter rotten rations, scary schools and even scarier new parents. In the second half of the show Alf and Sally deal with their new life and the audience wear 3D specs to see the amazing Bogglevision effects, getting ready to duck as the German bombers make their way to Coventry.
Frightful First World War is the story of 13-year-old Angelica Taylor who, while struggling with her history homework, gets sucked into her computer and stuck in the Horrible Histories website until she has travelled through the five years of the First World War. She’s helped by Private Paul Turner, a 16 year old solider whom she meets in every year of the war. But if Angelica doesn’t complete a task, gets killed or fails to reach 1918 before the battery power runs out, she’ll be stuck inside her laptop forever.
Terry Deary was recently described by the Daily Telegraph as ‘the country’s most influential historian’ and Cherie Blair has spoken proudly of her son, Leo, reading the Horrible Histories books. Terry is the author of 190 books which are sold in 40 different languages - even Chinese! Horrible Histories have sold more than 20 million books world wide. Books for Keeps magazine readers voted him “The Outstanding Children’s Non-Fiction Author Of The 20th Century” and a Schoolsnet survey made him the most borrowed British author in school libraries. Terry is also keen to take the lorded great and good down a peg or two.
Terry explains: “My job is not to write plays or books. My job is to change the world. I want to give people a proper perspective. Horrible Histories are about the hard-up and unfortunate and showing what evil people the powerful and privileged often are. The stories of poor people are always neglected and victims of suffering are often the real heroes”.
The Birmingham Stage Company have triumphed with stage versions of four of Terry Deary’s hugely successful ‘Horrible Histories’ books: the Tudors, Victorians, Egyptians and Romans. Using just four actors and amazing 3D Bogglevision, they are now undertaking their most ambitious task of bringing the First and Second World Wars alive to young theatre audiences.
Posted on Thursday, 15 January 2009 under Press Theatre Press