All Together Now in Ipswich

This year’s community theatre season at the New Wolsey in Ipswich is woven into the main professional theatre sequence of events. It also, for the first time, involves performances at the Studio Theatre as well as on the main stage and runs from 7 May until 18 July. There are new plays as well as classics, dance, variety and musicals and a special Bangladeshi series of events on 21 June.

The Dice House is a play by Paul Lucas based on a book by Luke Rhinehart. Imagine if everything in life depended on the throw of a dice…The New Wolsey Young Company take that chance between 7 and 9 May (studio). A Midsummer Night’s Dream is presented by Suffolk Youth Theatre from 20 to 23 May; there may be magic in the air, but some of it is darker that you might imagine (main house).

Black and White Productions offer a new play by Suzanne Hawkes, Mr Dickens – Public Lives, Private Passions. As with his friend Wilkie Collins, there was a dichotomy between the words of both writers and the lives they led. 25 and 26 June for you to find out more (studio). The Professor and the Soft Machine is a collaboration between Youth Perform! and the National Osteoporosis Society between 29 June and 2 July (main house).

Thoroughly Modern Millie flaps her way onto the main stage from 7 to 11 July in an Appeal Theatre Group presentation. Another tribute to the great age of stage musicals is Sondheim’s Follies, also in the main theatre and presented by the Gallery Players on 14 and 15 July.

Four contrasted events, all in the main theatre, take place on 20, 21,24 and 26 to 27 June. Summertime Variety is offered by Four Seasons in aid of Victim Support. There’s song, dance, drama and much more on the annual Bangladeshi Community Day. Archive film and music accompanies a staged reading of The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam which celebrates the bicentenary of the translater, the Suffolk poet Edward Fitzgerald. High Voltage 9 brings together DanceEast’s adult performance companies and youth groups in two new programmes.