New Season Overview

The Anniversary - Bill McIIwraith

Henry is a sad sack who nicks ladies’ knickers from clothes lines and wears them - and any other item of women’s clothing that come his way - in the privacy of his bedroom. Terry, who accidentally removed one of his mother’s eyes with an airgun, now has a conscience that prevents him from emigrating to Canada with his hitherto patient wife. Relatively normal Tom, a Beatles clone, has a girlfriend who loves him but has second thoughts when she meets the family. All are employed in the deceased father’s somewhat dodgy building business. Through this mire of fear and suppressed anger sails Mum, loving one minute, supremely scornful the next, dedicated to making the sons’ lives a misery while continually mourning her husband, who doubtless had the same treatment when alive.


TheConstant Wife  - Somerset Maugham

The Constant Wife, Somerset Maugham's comedy of marital manners and mores is set to send us time travelling backward. The time is 1926, the year when the play premiered on Broadway starring Ethel Barrymore and, after a respectable 295-performance run, moved to London. The story unfolds in the elegant drawing room of Constance Middleton and her surgeon husband, John who appear to have been blissfully married for fifteen years and enjoy their upper crust life style. But there would be no play if the Middletons' charmed life were quite as rosy as it seems, so no sooner does the curtain rise than the truth about their marriage comes to light as Constance's sister Martha and her mother discuss the pros and cons of telling Constance that John has been having an affair. To make this betrayal doubly shocking as well as socially embarrassing, the other woman is Constance's best friend Marie-Louise. As the perfect marriage is something of a masquerade, so Constance's unawareness about what's been happening. Despite broad hints from her outraged sister she is insistently and cheerfully blind-eyed about the affair. What's more, when confronted by Mary-Louise's jealous husband she saves the day with an alibi for the lovers.


Humble Boy - Charlotte Jones   

Felix Humble is a Cambridge University lecturer. In his late thirties, unmarried and largely unsuccessful, he has returned to his parent's home for the funeral of his father. His academic quest is to work on superstring theory which is the theory of everything and would embrace both Einstein's Theory of Relativity and quantum physics. Felix's father was a biology teacher and a keen entomologist, botanist and beekeeper. Felix has balked at delivering the eulogy at the funeral service and left the church. His elegant and beautiful mother, Flora Humble, is entertaining the rather vulgar coach fleet owner, George Pye, who has amorous intentions towards her. Flora has just had a cosmetic operation on her nose which results in her losing her sense of smell. Nurse and single mother Rosie Pye, George's daughter, once had a love affair with Felix but was deserted by him. George hates Felix. Felix hates George. The spinster, Mercy Lott is Flora's friend but her role is almost that of a maid. Jim the Gardener interacts with Felix alone, until the final scene.


Sweet Charity (Musical)


Footloose (Musical)