Back in 1967, the most extraordinary thing about Bentilee was its status as one of the largest council estates in Europe – at least, that is, until the night of 2 September. The bright lights seen then, by scores of people, were nothing to do with the industries in the surrounding area, the potteries, mines and steel furnaces of Stoke-on-Trent. Eyewitnesses reported that “it seemed like a saucer”, “it changed in different colours”. One admitted: “I did get frightened of it when it dropped.”
Deborah McAndrew’s latest play opens and closes with this extraordinary event. In the tiny, bare brick-walled, former pottery dipping house that is the new home of Claybody Theatre (founded and run by McAndrew with her husband and joint artistic director, Conrad Nelson), the earth seems to rumble, an eerie something to come and go. Surprised locals stand before us, staring up and over our heads, as if interrogating the night sky beyond the theatre roof.
