A NEW countrywide tour has been announced by the city's full mask theatre company Vamos Theatre.

Vamos has announced a 56-date UK tour funded by Arts Council England and Worcestershire County Council.

The show Nursing Lives will begin touring on February 11, 2015 travelling west to Anglesey, north to Halifax, east to Canterbury and south to Jersey.

Fittingly, the tour will end back home in Worcester at The Swan on June 5 and 6.

The show is a re-working of one of the award-winning company’s most popular shows to date, and is a love story set in the early 1980s of Thatcher’s Britain and the hard-working, heart-breaking, swing-dancing world of the UK’s wartime hospitals.

Based on true experiences of nurses training and working in wartime Britain, it was developed with the help of many former nurses, several of whom trained at the Worcester Royal Infirmary.

Performed with no spoken words, Nursing Lives is a vibrant, humorous and poignant production featuring characterful masks, period music, swing dance and vintage costumes.

The show will be performed by four professional actors, two of whom are Worcester-based.

Sarah Hawkins and Marissa Gunter both grew up in the city, and will be joined by James Greaves and Richard J Fletcher.

Artistic director, Rachael Savage said: "As a touring company it is always really exciting to put a show out on the road and take it to such varied places.

"We’re particularly proud to be taking Worcester-made theatre out on such a high-profile UK tour."

For more details of the tour, log on to vamostheatre.co.uk.