At first, I didn’t quite get the makeup of this five-week festival. My fault entirely – it is exactly what it says on the publicity.
The Hoard festival commemorates the discovery, six years ago this month, of “the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found”. I got that – but I expected it to be, well, interesting, yes – but, you know, (whispers) worthy. Wrong! Turns out, it’s a mixture of the expected (stunning, high magnification pictures along the walls) and the improbable (a real, live archaeologist running a dig in the theatre’s garden - though not all day and all night – check times), as well as a treasure trove of tales.
Working in partnership with the National Theatre Studio, the New Vic presents 19 new pieces, with themes real and imagined, relating to the find. They come in all shapes and sizes: main stage, multi-cast double bills; one-person studio shows; and, in the foyer, a gallimaufry of five-minute playlets by top writers, including April de Angelis and Alan Garner (his first piece for theatre). Choose a title from a list of synopses pinned to an OS map, tell the “story archaeologist” in hi-vis jacket and performers are sent to your table.
The double bill I caught opened with Unearthed, a documentary drama written and directed by the Vic’s artistic director, Theresa Heskins. Heskins interviewed the metal detectorist who discovered the first of the 3,500 intricately worked pieces that make up the Staffordshire hoard. How did it get there? He did not know. She asked experts. Nobody knows for sure. From hours of encounters, she reconstructs the find and the inquiries. Actors speak the real words of real people. Images of the golden pieces are spread in light across the floor – wondrous. In form fragmented, like the hoard, the play just occasionally loses momentum, but vivid performances soon set it spinning again.
The Gift imagines the effect of the gold on the area’s early inhabitants. Writer Jemma Kennedy has the old, Saxon world (the women in the clan village), and the new age dawning (the menfolk return from battle bringing the Christian religion). Pragmatic warriors follow their chief’s choice; women resist, cling to old ways. The pitfalls of historical drama are not always avoided. The past is sometimes romanticised in strange rituals and sometimes made banal through 21st-century expressions and behaviours. Situations sometimes seem dramatically forced, but the questions they raise are always interesting. Gemma Fairlie’s direction highlights strengths, while actors develop compelling characterisations. All in all, the Vic’s Hoard provides a rich and rewarding cache of stories.
• At the New Vic theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme until 25 July
