Multi-award-winning Lost Watch Theatre Company’s new show Shorts and Socks Included will have its world premiere at New Diorama Theatre this spring.
The show tells the little-known true story of Leicester-based clothing manufacturers Admiral who pitched a kit design to Leeds United FC, ended up designing the kit of the England National team and unwittingly gave birth to fashion and branding in football.
When England won the World Cup in 1966, football shirts weren’t iconic; they didn’t have sponsors, nobody wore replicas and as such they weren’t a major source of income for clubs. They most certainly weren’t a fashion statement.
Then, in a car park in Leeds, a small clothes manufacturer saw a chance to profit from world cup fever and pitched a new kit design to Leeds United’s legendary manager Don Revie.
Lost Watch’s brand-new ensemble show embodies their distinctive fusion of humour, hijinks, multi-roling, movement and the innate ability to put great stories on stage to unravel the rise and fall of the nun’s underwear company that birthed a multibillion-pound industry.
The action follows the career of Admiral’s 19 year-old designer and trailblazer Lindsay Jelley on a journey that revolutionised football throughout the 1960s and 1970s, with original research including interviews with Lindsay herself.
Formed in 2013, Lost Watch’s previous productions include Goodstock (2016) which explored genetic predisposition towards breast cancer, Flew the Coop (2017) which put a darkly comic twist on the real-life Second World War love story which brought to light one of history’s great forgotten female heroes, and Left My Desk (2018) a play that presents a vivid picture of what it is like to be someone working in social services in today’s society, at a time of staff shortages and restricted budgets.
Shorts and Socks Included is at New Diorama Theatre 31st March to 2nd May 2020.
