David Walliams' The Midnight Gang to be streamed to hospitals live from Chichester Festival Theatre

It will go to Chestnut Tree House children’s hospice near Arundel, the children’s wards at Chichester’s St Richard’s Hospital and Worthing Hospital, and to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

The matinee performance in the Festival Theatre will be filmed and broadcast directly to screens in each hospital where CFT hosts will be on hand to introduce the performance and answer questions. The broadcast follows the successful live stream of last Christmas’s Beauty and the Beast to St Richard’s and Worthing Hospitals. This will be the first live stream of a theatre production at both Great Ormond Street Hospital and Chestnut Tree House.

FOR INTERVIEW WITH DAVID WALLIAMS, SEE: https://www.chichester.co.uk/whats-on/music/david-walliams-recalls-happy-chichester-childhood-memories-as-city-welcomes-world-premiere-1-8674712

Daniel Evans, Artistic Director of Chichester Festival Theatre, says: "We are so delighted to be live streaming the matinee performance of The Midnight Gang on 25 October to our two local hospitals in Chichester and Worthing, to Chestnut Tree House, and to Great Ormond Street Hospital.

"The Midnight Gang is about children in hospital helping each other to make their dreams come true. Taking our performance to children and their families who are unable to visit the theatre due to illness, is a dream come true for us, and an important extension of our work in the community.

"The Midnight Gang is a wonderfully inventive adventure about fun, friendship and the importance of kindness, and is recommended for everyone aged 7 and upwards.

A bang on the head during a cricket match at his boarding school has landed twelve-year-old Tom in the children’s ward of the spooky Lord Funt Hospital. Luckily he’s not on his own with the child-hating Matron and the scary-looking Porter. George, Amber, Robin and Sally are in there too, and they’re not taking things lying down. When the lights go off and the clock strikes twelve, they’re off. But will they let new boy Tom join their forbidden midnight adventures through the hospital’s labyrinthine realm?

This new stage version of The Midnight Gang is by Bryony Lavery, with music and lyrics by musician and composer Joe Stilgoe (who is a Patron for Chestnut Tree House). Jennie Dale, who is known to a huge CBeebies’ TV audience as ‘Captain Captain’ in Swashbuckle, plays the Matron, with a group of 11 – 14 year old actors playing the children of ‘The Midnight Gang’. It is directed by Dale Rooks, whose production of Michael Morpurgo’s Running Wild won the 2015 UK Theatre Award for Best Show for Children and Young People.

The Midnight Gang runs at Chichester Festival Theatre until 3 November. To book, visit cft.org.uk or ring 01243 781312.

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