Theatre News

Comedy, Crime and Drama in Southwold This Summer

Spring is just beginning to bud across East Anglia, but plans for the 2011 summer theatre season in Southwold are already well advanced. The Jill Freud Company once again stages each production at the St Edmunds Road venue in Southwold as well as at the Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh. Early bookings open for Southold on Monday 7 March and for Aldeburgh from Tuesday 3 May.

The season runs from 7 July until 10 September, with the first three productions premiering at Southwold and the last two in Aldeburgh. C P Taylor’s And a Nightingale Sang is a family story contained by the Second World War. It opens the season with a run from 7 to 19 July in Southwold and from 25 to 30 July in Aldeburgh.

Fiddlers Three is by Rising Damp scriptwriter Eric Chappell and is a comedy of office politics. 21 to 30 July in Southwold and 2 to 6 August in Aldeburgh. There follows the classic Ray Cooney and John Chapman farce Move Over Mrs Markham, in which a smart pied-à-terre is the scene of many footfalls – not all of these belong to its owners. Southwold savours the fun from 1 to 13 August and Aldeburgh from 16 to 20 August.

A new adaptation by Mark Simpson of Hardy’s novel Far From the Madding Crowd has its première in Aldeburgh on 8 August; when this run ends on 13 August, the production transfers to Southwold from 15 to 27 August. A classic Agatha Christie mystery Love From a Stranger brings the season to its close from 22 to 27 August in Aldeburgh and 30 August to 10 September in Southwold.