Could be good… Sanctuary

Sussex, October 1929: As financial markets collapse, two idealists celebrate an alternative lifestyle but unexpected visitors threaten to draw them into a nightmare world of ancient evil.

The show, Sanctuary, performed by ReStage in the last week of Fringe 2012, is written and directed by Brighton-born Chris Green and tells the story of an idealistic community in the Sussex countryside in the late 1920s threatened by the dark past of one of its members.

It’s based on the lives of anti-capitalist visionary Vera Pragnell and her friend poet and printer Victor Neuburg, a former associate of the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley.

Now based in York, Chris said “This is a fascinating, but little-known, episode of recent Sussex history and it has so many contemporary echoes that I felt it had to be told.

ReStage is a performance group based in Yorkshire and Northumberland but with close ties to Brighton. They specialise in bringing historical eras to life, either through specially-written site-specific pieces or by staging existing texts.

They leapt at the chance to bring the company, and this piece, to the Fringe Festival 2012 and have a cast that includes actor Paul Stonehouse who joins the BBC radio drama team from July and who, like the rest of the cast, has never visited Brighton before.

Sanctuary can be seen at James House, 2 Brunswick Terrace, Hove. BN3 1HN on 22-25 May at 7.00pm