Brighton Festival: The War Of The Worlds finally gets to play Worthing

And then everything changed.

But they are thrilled the show can now finally go on in Worthing this time as part of the Brighton Festival.

The show will be at Worthing’s Pavilion Theatre from Thursday, May 20-Saturday, May 22 – a mighty relief to all.

Co-artistic director Matt Wells said: “We just absolutely cannot wait to be back.

“We were in rehearsals in March 2020 when it all stopped, and now we are in rehearsals again. It felt like the pause button was pressed! The last time we did anything on stage was an excerpt for the preview night in Worthing last year, and now we have come full circle. Last year it was one of those things where everyone was putting on a brave face while looking over their shoulder about all the restrictions that were going to be coming in.”

It has been a tough time since, but absolutely not an unproductive one: “On one level people who work in the arts are pretty resourceful because you have to be able to adapt and pick up other skills when you need them.

“As a company it all forced us to come together to see how we might survive. It sounds pretty boring, but it meant that we were able to do some of the things that we just don’t usually have time to do like looking at governance and setting up good financial systems, putting those sorts of things into place. It was a time to take stock. The difficult part was that we were arts administrators for a year when actually the rewarding stuff is making the shows – the thing we weren’t able to do!