Rotherham Rep has something for everyone at the Civic

Productions include classics, drama, a spooky  thriller and comedy.

The season opens on Tuesday with Richard Harris’s Visiting Hour.  

Set in an NHS hospital during visiting hour, Harris — whose previous award-winning plays include Rep successes Stepping Out and Outside Edge — mixes the comic with the not so comic to have the audience reaching for their handkerchief one moment and rolling in the aisles the next.

Everyone remembers the antics of the Little Grimley Amateur Dramatic Society in Last Tango in Little Grimley and, by popular demand, they are back on November 20 with two more hilarious classics featuring the same incompetent characters — Gordon, Margaret, Joyce and Bernard in Last Panto in Little Grimley and The Fat Lady Sings in Little Grimley.

The first play of 2014, which opens on February 11, is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dale Wasserman’s classic story of Randie McMurphy, who feigns mental illness to avoid hard labour on a prison work farm and is admitted to an Oregon mental asylum.

Hilarious and heroic, tragic and liberating, this classic comedy drama is as relevant today as it was when it was first written.

Opening on April 8 is Alan Ayckbourn’s 61st play, the chilling thriller Snake In The Grass.

Miriam has cared for her father with the help of a nurse.   On his death, Miriam’s older sister, Annabel, comes home after more than 20 years to find she has inherited his fortune.

Alice, the nurse, is intent upon blackmail, having evidence that Miriam killed their father. Scatty Miriam and tough Annabel join forces against Alice. As night falls the garden is filled with memories, but is it just the past that returns to haunt them or something worse?

The Rep’s last production of the 2013/4 season opens on June 17 with Hay Fever, Noel Coward’s witty comedy of bad manners centred on retired actress Judith Bliss and her dysfunctional and eccentric family who realise that they are obliged to host a house party.

Misjudged meetings, secret seductions and scandalous revelations all run riot at the most outrageous of all house parties.

Tickets for individual performances are £8 and available from the Civic Theatre Box Office, telephone 01709 823621 or 01709 823640 or on line at www.rotherham.gov.uk/theatres/info/7/how_to_book_a_show

However, a Rotherham Rep season ticket offers a whole year of theatre at a saving. Book all five productions at the same time for just £30, saving £10, alternatively book four shows for £25, saving £7 or save £4 with three shows for £20.  

For details contact the Rep’s business manager on 01142 874 022.