Ghosts, butterflies and theatre tales arise in 122 Love Stories at Harrogate Theatre

Ghostly experience: Carole Carpenter’s Alice in 122 Love Stories

HARROGATE Theatre’s summer community play, 122 Love Stories, is a heart-warming ode to love, wrapped inside an interactive ghost-walk adventure.

Written and produced by Rachael Halliwell and directed by Amie Burns Walker – the artistic partnership behind last summer’s Our Gate –  this epic peripatetic drama promises “a different kind of night out at the theatre”.

Or indeed day out because today offers both a 2pm matinee and 7.30pm evening show with tickets still available for both on 01423 502116 or at harrogatetheatre.co.uk.

The invitation reads: “Join the ghosts of Harrogate Theatre on the ultimate quest to mend a broken heart. Journey with us as we travel across time to meet the owner of the theatre, Alex. Overcome with grief, Alex is ready to sell up and move on, but the theatre has other ideas…

“…See the theatre come to life as you meet a host of colourful characters from a forgotten past as they piece together the fragments of that broken heart.” 

Created with a community and professional cast, 122 Love Stories combines storytelling, live music, pigeons and butterflies in a celebration of 122 years of Harrogate Theatre.

After a callout for real-life love stories connected with the building and the theatre-going experience, Halliwell’s show is part-installation, combined with an immersive experience that explores the untold stories in the unseen spaces of Harrogate Theatre, a rabbit warren path evoking Alice In Wonderland.

122 Love Stories travels between locations through the theatre rather than being fixed on the stage like a traditional show. The cast guides you around the building into the different spaces, whether steep stairways, low-ceiling cellars or the newly renovated wardrobe department. Here you meet and interact with the characters from the show as the story unfolds.

CharlesHutchPress’s review will appear on Monday.