Shared Experience presents Mary Webb’s novel Gone to Earth, adapted by Helen Edmundson and directed by Nancy Meckler. This is a Bristol Old Vic debut for the London based company, who are renown for their distinctive brand of physical storytelling.

Gone to Earth is the passionate folk tale of a country girl from the remote area of the Shropshire border hills, written at the time of the First World War. Hazel Woodus, naïve yet vital and uninhibited, lives closer to nature than society. The daughter of a gifted harpist, Abel and a Welsh gypsy mother who is dead, Hazel is a true child of nature. She is pursued by two men, the fox-hunting squire, Jack Reddin, who wants to dominate and possess her and Edward Marston, the minister who wants to protect her innocence from the world. Their obsessive pursuit of Hazel threatens to tear her apart. This lyrical tale explores fundamental human desires, our relationship to the natural world and the attraction of violence.

Mary Webb wrote Gone to Earth in 1916 at the height of the horror and dark uncertainty of the First World War when many young men had literally “gone to earth”. The book received critical acclaim but was largely ignored by the reading public who at the time preferred overtly patriotic and heroic war stories rather than poetic rural narratives. Mary Webb died, disillusioned, at the age of forty-six and it was not until after her death that Gone to Earth captured the popular imagination.

Helen Edmundson, who also adapted Anna Karenina and Mill on the Floss for Shared Experience, collaborates with Nancy Meckler to bring their distinctive brand of physical story-telling to Mary Webb’s haunting story. Gone to Earth has original music composed by Olly Fox which will be played live on stage by harpist, Fiona Clifton-Welker, the production is designed by Nicki Turner with lighting by Jonathan Clark and movement by Liz Ranken and songs by Helen Edmundson.

Hazel Woodus will be played by newcomer, Natalie Tena, and the cast also includes Amelda Brown, Michelle Butterley, Jay Villiers and Simon Wilson.

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