Following a sold-out UK tour in 2016, and a fast-selling limited season in the West End – currently playing until 13 May at the Arts Theatre –the producers of The Wipers Times are pleased to announce that the production will once again tour the UK this autumn. It will open at the New Theatre Cardiff on 12 September 2017, and visit Oxford, Richmond, Southend, Guildford, Salisbury, Manchester, Cheltenham and Glasgow. Full tour dates at www.wiperstimesplay.co.uk with casting to be announced.
Ian Hislop and Nick Newman’s The Wipers Times – a stage adaptation of their award-winning BBC film – tells the true and extraordinary story of the satirical newspaper created in the mud and mayhem of the Somme, interspersed with comic sketches and spoofs from the vivid imagination of those on the front line.
Ian Hislop and Nick Newman said: “Following an amazing audience and critical reaction in the West End which was almost over the top, Wipers Times is on manoeuvres again around Britain. We look forward to sharing the remarkable trench humour of the Wipers Times with new theatre-goers around the country. We are delighted it is not Journey’s End but the tour will all be over by Christmas. “
In a bombed out building during the First World War in the Belgian town of Ypres (mispronounced Wipers by British soldiers), two officers discover a printing press and create a newspaper for the troops.
Far from being a sombre journal about life in the trenches they produced a resolutely cheerful, subversive and very funny newspaper designed to lift the spirits of the men on the frontline.
Defying enemy bombardment, gas attacks and the disapproval of many of the top Brass, The Wipers Times rolled off the press for two years and was an extraordinary tribute to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming adversity.
The production originally launched one hundred years after the Battle of the Somme and publication of The Wipers Times.
