Under the God

Playwright: Ann Jellicoe
Performance venue: Herrison Hospital. Ballroom
First performance: 14 November 1989
Play Office: Antelope Hotel, Cornhill, Dorchester

Director: Ann Jellicoe
Assistant director: Anne McInerney
Designer: Hilary Baxter
Music director: Andrew Dickson
Lighting designer: Ken Coker
Stage manager: Peter Bellamy
Play officer: Maggie Ansell

Brief synopsis

The play was linked to a community play Mark og Mønt also written by Ann Jellicoe for Holbaek with which Dorchester is twinned.

Set in 785 when the first Vikings set foot on British soil at Weymouth, and Dorchester, which had been abandoned after the collapse of the Roman empire, was reoccupied. There were real Danish-speaking Vikings and refugees from the continent, a whole village community of deeply superstitious people ruled over by an ineffective King of Wessex who was murdered, together with his homosexual lover, by the Queen.