Cast to meet Second World War evacuees

Evacuees from the Second World War will meet the cast of the touring Horrible Histories at New Brighton’s Floral Pavilion theatre to explain what life was like during the war years.

The theatre ran a campaign last month to find local people from Wirral, who were evacuated in the Second World War, to help bring the story alive to school children.

The evacuees that came forward in local schools then compared their stories to the stories being told within Horrible Histories.

The evacuees will meet the cast from the production, who play evacuees and their families, for coffee in the afternoon on Tuesday, 15 September.

Horrible Histories claims to concentrate on the aspects most history books and teachers don’t talk about.

The shows, based on the children’s books and television series, cover Terry Deary’s Frightful First World War and Woeful Second World War.

The first play tells 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.

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 Coventry – where they encounter rotten rations, scary schools and even scarier new parents. The show aims to bring the situation to life from a child’s point of view helping children to relate to the hardships and adventures faced by their grandparents.

Audience members will also be given a pair of Bogglevision Goggles, allowing them to see the objects in 3D – including the bombs and flames engulfing Coventry – which will fly out of the giant video screen on stage.

Horrible Histories is being produced by The Birmingham Stage Company and runs at the Floral Pavilion from Tuesday 15 September to Saturday, 19 September. Tickets cost £14, call the box office on 0151 666 0000.

Horrible Histories also runs at Manchester’s Opera House from 3 to 7 November 2009.

*Photograph taken by Dave Evans