A Malvern playwright's new play is to return home after proving a success at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Nick Wilkes has received critical acclaim with his new play 'When Vincent Met John'.

The play is a dual-character performance that envisions a meeting between two of the biggest cultural icons in history: Vincent van Gogh and John Lennon.

Both Van Gogh, a renowned 19th-century Dutch Post-Impressionist painter and Lennon, an English singer and songwriter who gained worldwide fame with The Beatles, met untimely ends with gunshot wounds.

The play by Wilkes showcases an intense period of change five years before the respective deaths of these cultural giants.

Wilkes said: "When you compare their lives, it’s amazing the similarities and connections that can be drawn.

“Their lives begin as polar opposites, but just like a bouncing ball getting ever closer to the floor, their lives become more and more drawn together by similar events, and when we find them at the start of the play, each around the age of thirty-three, both these men were in such a dark place and faced a dreadful crossroads”.

The piece highlights the icons' shared traits of being "strong-willed and outspoken," and "passionate, unpredictable, temperamental and volatile artists passionate about their art".

Wilkes believes that the meeting of such similar individuals would certainly result in a clash.

Wilkes, a trained actor from Bristol Old Vic and the first Writer In Residence at Malvern Festival Theatre since George Bernard Shaw, has spent several years researching the men's lives.

Due to popular demand the play will be performed at the Coach House Theatre on Grange Road in Malvern on Saturday, September 28 at 2.30pm and 7.30pm.

Wilkes said: "It’s brilliant after such great audiences and reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe to bring this play home to Malvern.

"The Coach House is a brilliantly equipped and perfectly sized studio for small-scale professional theatre, you just couldn’t build anything better.

"I’m so pleased to be able to bring When Vincent Met John here."

The play poses the question: "Both their lives ended in violent deaths, but was it inevitable or could it have ended differently?"

Tickets are priced at £16 and can be purchased from the Malvern Theatres box office on 01684 892277, or online at malvern-theatres.co.uk.