PREVIEW: Autumn season

Salisbury Playhouse

Free open day on Saturday September 12 will be an opportunity for everyone to see behind the scenes of one of the South West’s leading producing theatres.

There will be glimpses of rehearsals, an opportunity to visit the costume and set-building workshops, activities for children, lighting, sound and make-up demonstrations.

The new season in the main house opens nine days earlier, on September 3 to 26, with Alan Bennett’s funny and poignant memoir, The Lady in the Van, which chronicles his involvement with the indomitable Miss Shepherd who lived in her van in Bennett’s driveway for 15 years.

From September 14 to October 3 in the Salberg studio is an in-house production of David Harrower’s Blackbird. This powerful, highly-charged study of sexual obsession won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Play in 2007.

Patrick Marber’s After Miss Julie follows in the main house from October 1 to 24. Premiered at the Donmar Warehouse in 2003, this version of Strindberg’s Miss Julie relocates the fascinating, and ultimately tragic story of love across the class divide to an aristocratic English country house on the eve of the Labour Party’s 1945 landslide victory.

Meanwhile the Playhouse’s participation department will be busy in the Salberg Studio, with Romeo and Juliet: Unzipped, from October 13 to 17, an intriguing look at the choices behind how Shakespeare’s play can be staged.

For full details of the Autumn/Winter season, visit www.salisburyplayhouse.com.