Wildworks fix up Cadillac for fresh run at raceway

Wildworks are back in a wild venue for the revival of a 2024 hit show. Writer Carl Grose tells MILA CURLIN it all stemmed from a childhood visit to a stock car meet

Following its sellout success in the summer of 2024, the Cornish comedy drama The Kneebone Cadillac is set to be back on the track for three weeks this July. And I mean that literally – the venue is the United Downs Raceway.

Although a somewhat unusual place for a theatre production, the stock car racing circuit near St Day is an integral part of the site-specific spectacle. The show, written by Carl Grose and directed by Kyla Goodey, is brought to the raceway by Wildworks, the Porthtowan-based company well-known for staging productions in spectacular locations. 

The show follows the three hard-up Kneebone siblings Maddy, Slick and Dwight, who are left with their father’s scrapyard and cherished 1958 Cadillac Eldorado after his death. Everyone is shocked when it turns out he left the latter to his only daughter. The family has a major fall-out when Maddy, instead of selling the broken auto, decides to fix it and participate in the legendary Boneshaker stock car race at United Downs.

Built on former mining land, the unique raceway has existed for over 50 years, and is a popular destination in the Cornish countryside, recently fighting off threats of closure. 

Writer Carl Grose’s fascination with the venue started at a young age, when he first visited it with his dad: “It’s really smelly, it’s really loud, it’s kind of dangerous. But there is this massive sense of community there that you just don’t get anywhere else.”

The idea for The Kneebone Cadillac emerged many years later, after Grose had written a play called Superstition Mountain, and offered it to BBC Radio. Producer Claire Grove suggested he turn one of the three male characters into a female one, and set the story in Cornwall, rather than America. 

“Immediately I had this idea of going: ‘Oh, this might be my excuse to set it in the world of stock car racing’.”

The result was a successful play on BBC Radio 4 in 2011, and Grose eventually developed the show for Plymouth Theatre Royal. Grose and Kyla Goodey began discussing the drama when they were apprentices at the now-closed Kneehigh Theatre, and the idea was born to stage it with Wildworks at the United Downs circuit. 

Grose notes that while it was hard to recreate a sense of the event at the Theatre Royal, this has been much easier to achieve at the raceway itself. 

“It’s just been a real thrill really to sort of watch the idea get bigger,” he says, adding that it has been a very surreal experience to see a play he has written being staged on the circuit he visited when he was little, and finally have his dreams come true. 

He points out that the show will not be quite the same as two years ago. Among many new cast members (including Grose himself) are a couple of structural changes. 

“It’s just fantastic to re-approach it. We’ve done it once and we know it works, so now we’re just looking to try and improve certain things.”

Being part of the cast has given Grose some new perspectives on the show. “I’ve just been cutting my dialogue because I find it quite hard to remember,” he laughs, recollecting how he told the cast that he couldn’t get any lines wrong. “I’m just rewriting on the spot.”

Looking back on the rehearsal process so far, Grose remarks he couldn’t have asked for a better cast. “It’s just been a blast,” he says.

Grose’s stories are often based in Cornwall, and he makes it his mission to try and perpetuate Cornish culture through his plays. “I think we’re in a world where lots of things are getting flattened out, lots of things are getting homogenised,” he reflects. To him, the raceway is an anomaly, “a kind of community hanging on by its fingernails”. 

He adds: “I like things that are on the edge of being phased out.”

He says it would be great to take it outside Cornwall again. “I really think the story would work anywhere.” A potential tour of other racetracks could be in the pipeline, and Grose adds it would probably be a very strong festival show. “We’re sort of waiting to see what happens with this newer version,” he says.

What does he want audiences to get from the show? “I hope they are blown away by the racetrack, and I hope they’re blown away by the show.”

The Kneebone Cadillac runs at United Downs Raceway (TR16 5HY) from July 10-29, 2026. You can read more about the show and cast, and book tickets, at wildworks.org.uk.