Touring adaptation of Crongton Knights to stream for free

The stage adaptation of Alex Wheatle’s award-winning young adult novel Crongton Knights is to be streamed for free after the tour was cut short by the coronavirus.

The company of Crongton Knights. Photo: Robert Day The webcast will be available from the Pilot Theatre Website from 6.45pm on Wednesday 22 April – the day the production was due to open at Theatre Peckham in London. It can be watched online until Saturday 9 May, the day the tour was due to finish.

York-based Pilot Theatre embarked on the tour of Crongton Knights on February 8 at Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, continuing to York Theatre Royal, Theatre Royal Brighton and The Lowry in Salford. The theatre shutdown prevented it from running at Derby Theatre, Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield and Theatre Peckham.

The film will open with a special introduction from the creative team of Alex Wheatle, playwright Emteaz Hussain and co-directors Esther Richardson and Corey Campbell.

To coincide with the webcast, Pilot will put online a series of talks and Q&As with the team behind Crongton Knights. The first Pilot Connects event will be a Q&A with the production’s composer and musical director, Conrad Murray, hosted by Esther Richardson, Pilot’s artistic director, on Thursday 23 April.

Crongton Knights takes you on a night of madcap adventure as McKay and his friends, “The Magnificent Six”, encounter the dangers and triumphs of a mission gone awry. In this world premiere adaptation of the best-selling novel, the pulse of the city is alive on stage with a soundscape of beatboxing and vocals laid down by the cast.

The ensemble included performers Olisa Odele (Ola in TV comedy Chewing Gum) as McKay with Kate Donnachie, Zak Douglas, Simi Edbejumi-David, Aimee Powell, Khai Shaw, Marcel White and Nigar Yeva.

It is a co-production between Pilot Theatre, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Derby Theatre and York Theatre Royal who last year formed – with the Mercury Theatre Colchester – a new partnership to develop theatre for younger audiences. During the four years from 2019 to 2022 the consortium is commissioning and co-producing four original mid-scale productions.