Stamford director and cast from Oakham, Market Deeping and Peterborough take runners-up spot at All England Theatre Festival

A local production has narrowly missed out on a place in the final of a national theatre competition.

Warmind came through regional heats and then the quarter-finals of the All England Theatre Festival to move the one-act play, directed by Stamford’s Matthew Clift, within one performance of the final.

The cast of Market Deeping actor Ben Stroud, Oakham’s Ellie Dickinson, and Peterborough-based Nikki Amory earned the runners-up award in the semi-finals, at Leicester, but it wasn’t quite enough to go through.

“It was quite an achievement bearing in mind how many companies entered across the whole of the central region,” said Matthew, who created an authorised adaptation of Howard Brenton’s Warmind.

However, this may not yet be the end of the run.

The company’s success has earned them an invite to apply for the National Drama Festival.

It features the best of British amateur theatre, with groups from across the British Isles and beyond chosen to compete based on their success on this year’s festival circuit.

Companies from Gibraltar, Geneva, the Channel Islands, Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man and England were represented in 2024.

“They will all have already won awards and have been deemed by the adjudicators to be this year’s ‘cream of amateur theatre’,” Matthew explained.

“It is one of the prestige annual events in this country’s amateur theatre.”

Warmind will find out if they have been chosen by the first week in June. The festival is held at the Artrix, in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, from July 31 to August 3.