Prof Alice Roberts - From Cell to Civilisation

Prof Alice Roberts brings her stage show From Cell to Civilisation to Victoria Hall on Wednesday 4 November, with the evening running from 7:30pm to around 9:30pm. It's a theatrical production that pulls together archaeology, evolutionary biology and genetics, using sound, light and imagination to bring the science to life rather than just talking through it.

The show traces human origins back to the very beginning of life on Earth: about four billion years of evolution in one evening. Roberts starts with the first spark of life roughly 3.8 billion years ago and follows the migration of living things through other human species and on to the earliest civilisations. It's a long stretch of time to cover in a couple of hours, but that's the whole point — seeing the connection between the first single cell and the complex societies we live in now.

Roberts has taken the show to Australia and Canada before bringing it to the UK, so it's a polished piece of theatre by the time it reaches us. It runs for around two hours with a twenty-minute interval, so you'll have a break to stretch your legs and process everything before the second half. The whole thing should wrap up by about 10:15pm.

Tickets are £59.28, and the show is at Victoria Hall on Bagnall Street in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, ST1 3AD. It starts at 7:30pm on Wednesday 4 November.