Black Beauty Live, UK Tour 2012
A classic – Peel style!
In the summer of 2012 PEEL brought a classic novel, reinvented for a modern audience, to cultural and heritage sites all over the UK. Adapted for theatre for the first time, our touring production of Black Beauty was a stylish and contemporary dramatization of the iconic story.
When we first told our expert script writer James Stone about the project, he said, “It can’t be done”. A couple of months later and Black Beauty was on the road, James’ brilliant script in hand.
Black Beauty was produced by PEEL MD and BBC award-winning playwright Susannah Daley and directed by Dr Chris Ford, a founding member of the National Railway Museum’s theatre company, Platform 4. Our cast were carefully handpicked from only the finest British young acting talent, with many of them subsequently featuring in the West End.
As told through the eyes of the stallion, our production followed Black Beauty’s life as a work-horse in the 19th Century – from his carefree days on a country farm, to a more gruelling existence pulling cabs in London and down the mine.
One of our biggest challenges in staging Black Beauty was bringing the horses to life. For this we drafted in Hayley Neil, an expert costume designer who’s worked for the likes of The Pussycat Dolls, Walking with Dinosaurs and The King’s Speech. Working alongside our dedicated wardrobe department, we managed to create a stellar cast of equine costumes.
The performances were tailored to each venue we performed in and we provided a variety of event packages, including pre-theatre workshops and school performances. We created a national PR and marketing campaign which reached more than 10 million people and attracted some lovely comments.
