Coventry blitz anniversary marked with sell-out Belgrade show’s return

Wartime drama One Night in November returns to the Belgrade Theatre once again from October 30 to November 13 with a brand new main stage.

The play follows the dramatic events around one family’s harrowing experience during the Coventry blitz.

It also asks whether the then Prime Minister Winston Churchill could have ordered an evacuation before the attack, or whether he chose to sacrifice the city to provoke America into the war.

The main protagonist in the war-time love story are Michael, an Oxford tutor who has been forced to turn his literary skills to deciphering codes at Bletchley Park and Katie, a headstrong 18 year old who lives with her family in Coventry. Hamish Glen, the Belgrade’s artistic director and director of the play, said:

“Theatres in the end are local places, and if we can tell local stories then people can really engage with it.

“I’m still really enjoying being involved with the production. There’s a new cast so they can come to a fresh way of finding the story.

“I’m especially pleased to be adapting the play for the main stage, as this allows us to do things on a much bigger scale and to really capture the sense of what it feels like to be at the mercy of such a dreadful aerial bomb attack.

“We are itching to get on stage now and bringing it all back to life.”

The play first staged at the Belgrade in 2008 and was so popular it returned later in the year for another sell-out run, and now is back once again with an all new cast, with the exception of Aran Bell and Helen Sheals who reprise their roles for the third time.

Tickets are available from the box office on 024 7655 3055 or online, from £9 to £20.