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"The course of true love never did run smooth"

Shakespeare’s riotous tale of magic and mayhem unfolds over a single summer’s night. Four lovers, a feuding king and queen of the fairies, and six amateur actors become embroiled in each other’s stories as confusion reigns in the woods.

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One story, four lives - navigating a twisted maze of discrimination and survival

"Somebody must have made a false accusation against Joseph K, for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong" - Franz Kafka, The Trial. Emily White's adaptation entwines the torments of discrimination and injustice into a witty physical performance as four diverse individuals play Joseph K battling within the big bureaucratic machine.

Copyright & Licence |An amateur production by arrangement with Independent Talent.

"Shall then, for that I am her brother born,
My joys be ever banished from her bed?"

Forbidden love between brother and sister leads to tragic consequences. This Jacobean masterpiece offers verse to rival Shakespeare, tragic roles as challenging as Ophelia and Juliet – and a villain more treacherous than Iago.

Guidance –This play explores adult themes and includes depictions of violence as well as exhibiting 17th century attitudes that may be abhorrent today.

A Young Actors Company production.

Grace has something growing inside her. She doesn't know what it is, but she knows it's not a baby. It expands. It has claws. But she can't contain it forever. Sooner or later something's got to give…

Guidance - mention of mild body horror imagery and violence.

Copyright & Licence
‘The IT’, is an amateur production by arrangement with Nick Hern Books

London in the Blitz, and love is fleeting: time to make hay.

Bobby, the young Earl of Harpenden, has begged for leave from the Royal Navy to marry his fiancée, Lady Elizabeth. But on the eve of the wedding a beefy American airman and an impulsive Free French lieutenant also fall head over heels for the bride-to-be.

Guidance – Some characters and dialogue reflect stereotypes and attitudes of the time the play was written (1943)

Copyright & Licence | This amateur production of “While the Sun Shines” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd. on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. www.concordtheatricals.co.uk

Fifty years ago, Alan Ayckbourn’s acclaimed trilogy, The Norman Conquests, opened in the West End. Following the events of a weekend in a faded middle-class abode in the south of England Table Manners (set in the dining room) is the best known.

Guidance – This play was written in 1973 and reflects the language and attitudes of that time.

Copyright & Licence
This amateur production of “Table Manners” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd. on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. www.concordtheatricals.co.uk

In the mist of deception, everyone's a suspect.
Who will reveal the truth?

Guidance – Contains the use of guns and gunfire. Some characters and dialogue reflect stereotypes and attitudes of the time the play was written (1958).

Copyright & Licence
This amateur production of “The Unexpected Guest” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd. on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. www.concordtheatricals.co.uk

Fog on the down. Snow falls in hell. Arden must die.

Alice Arden plots to kill her husband.
With the aid of her lover, servants, neighbours and professional killers, it takes many attempts that are both savagely comic as well as tragic. Are they incompetent, or just unlucky?

Guidance – This play explores adult themes and includes depictions of violence, as well as exhibiting 16th-century attitudes that may be abhorrent today.

Looking after number one, that's all good business is.

1975. From a rundown Chicago junk shop, three petty criminals plan a robbery of a rare 'American Buffalo' nickel coin.

Guidance - Contains extremely offensive, racist and homophobic language, and scenes of violence.

Copyright & Licence –
This amateur production of “American Buffalo” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd. on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. www.concordtheatricals.co.uk

A Junior Actors Company production.

“Finding the epic in the ordinary”

Copyright & Licensing Information
Selection from ONE MILLION TINY PLAYS ABOUT BRITAIN by Craig Taylor. Copyright © 2009, Craig Taylor, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited.

A Young Actors Company production.

"When Bad Choices Lead to Unlikely Bonds, can Redemption Break the Spell?"

A group of teenagers do something bad, really bad, then panic and cover the whole thing up. But when they find that their cover-up unites them and brings harmony to their once fractious lives, where is the incentive to put things right?

Copyright & Licensing Information:
This amateur production of “DNA” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd.
on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. www.concordtheatricals.co.uk

“Have you ever loved someone?”

Cyrano de Bergerac, a man of countless talents and one very prominent nose, yearns for the love of the beautiful Roxane.

GUIDANCE: 11+ Contains scenes of period warfare including swords and musket fire, smoke effects and scenes that some people may find distressing.

Copyright & Licensing Information:
This amateur production of “Cyrano De Bergerac (Maxwell)” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd. on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. www.concordtheatricals

"Sometimes, the most audacious escapes are plotted in the most unlikely of places."

In a retirement home for old soldiers, three elderly veterans while away their days with tepid suppers and tales of past glories. That is until an opportunity to make a daring escape presents itself...

Copyright & Licensing Information. This amateur production of “Heroes” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd.
on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. www.concordtheatricals.co.uk

"I am not what I am”

On a hot, isolated Mediterranean island three outsiders – a black leader in a white state, an unworldly woman in a war zone, and a vengeful malcontent holding a grudge – plunge into tragedy.

GUIDANCE | Othello explores adult themes and language and depictions of violence.

Coward’s comic masterpiece explores the pain and passion of love, as Elyot and Amanda try to rekindle their broken marriage, in one of the most sophisticated, entertaining plays ever written.

It’s 1955 and The All-Female Pallas Players, a touring troupe, present their retelling of a whisky-filled shipwreck on a remote Scottish island, where the ‘golden dram’ supply has dried up due to the war.

"The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?"

Charged with responsibility to eliminate all wrongdoing within his hotel, Duke Vincentio entrusts his deputy, Angelo, with full authority. Nevertheless, Duke Vincentio decides to return in secret and to observe how Angelo wields his newly found power.

A crashing scandal of lies, crime and greed.

Based on true events, Lucy Prebble combines classical tragedy with sharp comedy to reveal the lies, crime and greed in this powerful political satire.

"Beware the Ides of March…"

A city on the brink… a murderous regime change.. a descent into civil war. This production promises an exciting contemporary interpretation of the play, staged in the round, in our annual open air production.

“Now my good Angel, whom God appoints
To be my Guardian, hover over the swords' points."

A nation divided, war on the horizon, a new king with everything to prove…

Macbeth meets Hamlet meets Granny Weatherwax!

A YOUNG ACTORS COMPANY PRODUCTION

In this radio-noir, private detective parody, Jake Revolver fights against conspiracy, double cross and self-reference to uncover the killer of his own narrator.

Holloway Jones is 16, her Mum is in prison, and she is in foster care. Despite all this, her life is on track. But...

A classic Christie country house whodunnit complete with the customary red herrings for breakfast…

A festive comedy - the alternative nativity play with the children played by grown-ups!

Enjoy the comical consequences as we enter into a haphazard household hilariously poking fun at a man obsessed by his own imaginary illnesses.

Hay Fever is one of Noel Coward's most treasured comedies. Written and set in the 1920s, it is a farce laying bare the family relationships and rivalries in the Bliss country home over one weekend.

During one hot Midsummer’s Eve, the aristocratic Miss Julie and her servant engage in a dangerous dance of desire, intimacy and betrayal. The performance scheduled for Monday 19th September was cancelled as a mark of respect.

A couple in their 60’s who were, once, both scientists in the nuclear industry are living in retirement in a rented holiday cottage by the sea. The routine of their life is altered when an old friend, also a scientist, pays a visit.

Antipholus and his servant Dromio arrive in the Wild West of Ephesus - not knowing their identical twins live there already! So begins Shakespeare's slapstick farce, where mistaken identities occur at every turn, leading to twists, turns and lots of laughter. A perfect, light-hearted return to theatre!

Chronicling several years in the lives of a group of lecturers at a Cambridge School of English for Foreign Students. A gentle and very funny look at seven "lives of quiet desperation".

If the world had no limits...

An anthology of horror stories, presented by Richmond Shakespeare Society and live from Mary Wallace Theatre. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbJ8PsShc-NlVMCOVeZ6hPw/videos

A selection of Shakespeare's most famous scenes performed in Marble Hill Park

Ben Hur follows Daniel Veil and his three (mostly) willing friends, Crystal, Omar and Edgar, as they attempt to re-create the famous biblical epic on the amateur stage. Daniel has adapted, directed, designed and choreographed the whole piece and is very, very confident it will be a success.

The All-Female Pallas Players are a troop of women touring the country in 1955 presenting light hearted, beloved tales…. as best they can.

Shakespeare’s captivating tale surveys the entire panorama of English life and offers some of his most dramatic moments, iconic characters, and rich exuberant humour.

Moving from comedy to tragedy, an ensemble of twenty-two actors brings this exhilarating exploration of familial ties, national division, treachery and war to life across two epic parts.

Elizabeth Bennet is a witty, high-spirited, independent woman who has no desire to marry - unless it is to her equal. Is that charismatic George Wickham or aloof Fitzwilliam Darcy?

When the widowed Duchess of Malfi defies her family and chooses a new husband, she unwittingly unleashes a murderous nightmare.

Telling of one family and its self-discovery over the course of a long August day in 1912, when James Tyrone, a hugely successful immigrant Irish actor has retreated with his wife and two sons to their Connecticut seaside home.

Ebenezer Scrooge is a cruel and selfish money lender who on Christmas Eve is visited by four ghosts...

The Young Actors' Company enter a world of higher nature, supernature and illusion, as they invite you to join them in Shakespeare's eternal tale of truth and beauty.

In this multi-award-winning comedy, first produced in 2006, two couples meet to decide what should be done about the fact that their children have been fighting. One thing is certain … nothing like this must ever happen again!

The year is 1869. The place is New York City. The dust is settling after the carnage and destruction of the American Civil War...

York House Gardens make a perfect setting for the eavesdropping scenes, the famous verbal duels between Beatrice and Benedick, the villainous Don John, and Dogberry’s bumblingly incompetent watch.

A series of vignettes from the master of modern comedy, performed by our talented youngsters.

A powerful and resonant play about a woman serving a life sentence, Iron offers tremendous insights – not merely into the nature of life imprisonment, but into the human condition...

The world of Cymbeline is that of fairy-tale, ancient legend, and love tested almost to breaking-point. Cymbeline, King of Britain, furious that his daughter Imogen should have married against his wishes, banishes his new son-in-law...

Why does the gaslight flicker? Whose footsteps can be heard in the locked room overhead? Is Bella going mad, as her mother did...?

The curtain opens on two Elizabethans spinning coins. We're not sure who they are, where they are or even when they are....but then again, neither are they!

Julius Caesar is dead: his right-hand man, Antony, and his legal heir, Octavius, have divided the Roman Empire between them in an uneasy peace. But Antony has become deeply enraptured by the Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra. And she's as ambitious and wily and seductive a politician as any Roman...

Maureen Folan, a 40-year-old spinster, takes care of her 70 year-old selfish and manipulative mother, Mag. While her sisters have escaped into marriage and family life, Maureen, with a history of mental illness, is trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with her mother...

Neil Simon wrote this female version of his 1960s hit in response to a demand from American actresses who wanted to perform the play. Oscar and Felix become Olive and Florence...!

Grab your top hats and tea cakes and step into Wonderland with RSS Youth Theatre as they guide you onto each chess square with a little help from a singing Walrus, a sleepy dormouse and a very Mad Hatter.

Two young women arrive in a nameless British small town. Their names are not their own. They don't declare their ages...

Take four runaway lovers, a mysterious forest, a pack of meddling spirits, a motley comic crew and a love potion...

Times are tough in a New York real-estate office; the salesmen (Shelley Levene, Ricky Roma, Dave Moss, and George Aaronow) are given a strong incentive to succeed in a sales contest...

Natalya Petrovna is adored and loved by her husband Islaev whilst also providing a secret and unfulfilled romantic focus for his best friend and Natalya's confidante, Rakitin...

Two happily married women find their lives thrown into comical disarray by news of a "ghost" from their romantic pasts...

Henry Higgins, a well off, rakish, Professor of Phonetics makes a bet that he can transform the manners and speech of Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle...

Shakespeare's fascinating study of English power politics strays far from the common image of King John as the weak monarch forced to sign Magna Carta...

Police Detective Sergeant Johnson is a man in extremis, with a failed marriage, recurrent memories of all the terrible crimes he has witnessed, and despair with a world that allows such things to be...

Experience the world of Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake's famous gothic novel. This hugely successful adaptation allows the epic, ghostly world to develop...

'Cinderella...' is a fast paced ride through the adventures of Cinderella the Lumberjack... 'Crinkley Bottom...' is an exciting romp through theatre and movie's best bits...

This is not a historically accurate or necessarily illuminating play about Tom Paine (the real person) - or the (mythical) revolutionary who was a central figure in English civil unrest, the American War of Independence or the French Revolution, but...

Love, sex, birth, death and salsa classes. Three generations of Dublin women. One extraordinary year...

Full of Eastern promise, the Arabian Nights, rags-to-riches tale of Aladdin is packed with magic, fun and adventure, making it a pantomime hard to beat...

Conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler, prized by Hitler as the cultural jewel in the crown of the Third Reich, became a post-war target for interrogation as a Nazi sympathiser...

Our production is very different from the more popular modern day Peter Pans; we have attempted to present it in the style Barrie intended, a complete childhood fantasy in which you can fly, fight Pirates, join a Red Indian tribe and make friends with a crocodile...

A hero and heroine who age from nine to middle age, a flight down river, a convict pursued across the marshes, a decaying wedding cake...

While this play explores serious issues, the low life scenes are as funny as anything you will find in Much Ado About Nothing and there is a note of black comedy running throughout the play.

Hapless M.E.P. Philip Wardrobe has a busy day ahead of him, balancing his less-than-irreproachable political career with his attempts to start a family...

Travel around the world and explore forgotten myths and unusual legends in eight fast-paced and hilarious tales...

This tale of passionate love across the divide of feuding families with its inter-generational conflicts and painful twists of fate provides an array of excellent parts...

A hilarious romp through the worst kind of "Am Dram", with every possible disaster befalling the Townswomen's ambitious mystery show...

Viola, shipwrecked and separated from her (of course) twin brother, seeks to make a life for herself in Illyria at the court of Duke Orsino, disguised, (well, obviously) as a young man...

The fabled figures of Jonathan Harker, the archetypal innocent abroad, Mina Westerman, his anxious fiancé, the prophetic lunatic Renfield, Van Helsing and, of course, Count Dracula himself and his tragic victim Lucy are brought brilliantly to life in this adaptation for the stage...

The story of a passionate love affair which implodes in the course of one day in 1952. Hester is older than Freddie but her desire for him makes Hester leave her respectable husband...

Jerry, May and George sell their vaudeville act to migrate to Hollywood with the advent of the talkies.............. and become 'vocal consultants' at Glogauer Studios with all the fun and complications that such a situation can engender...

A small French town on a Sunday morning...The cafe is bustling, the streets full of people going to mass or to market... Suddenly a cloud of dust appears and a rhinoceros charges down the street...

Moulineaux, a doctor married to Yvonne, attempts to have his first affair with the wife of Aubin, a retired military man, who is having an affair with the lost wife of Bassinet...

By turns funny, disquieting, farcical and shocking, these two short plays are radically different from anything else you are likely to see.

Join Robin and sidekick Egbert on a mission to rescue the beautiful Maid Marion from the clutches of the evil Sheriff of Nottingham (who it has to be said has some very dubious morals)...

Is a benevolent dictatorship sometimes beneficial, even necessary? Are there situations where direct violent action is the most moral course? Can those in power ever be trusted to serve the people they represent, rather than their own interests?

Arguably the most popular comedy of the English-speaking stage...

Freely adapting the text of Romeo and Juliet, Ben Power has created a very contemporary tale of love and sacrifice...

The wealthy, elderly Mrs St Maugham thinks she is a good gardener and a wonderful grandmother, but the results suggest otherwise. Can the enigmatic Miss Madrigal help her to succeed...?

A modern classic, this passion-fuelled play tells the story of a reluctant betrothal, a surprise elopement and a bloody revenge...

Shakespeare's most gripping psychological thriller explores the potentially lethal power of love, deception and, most potently, jealousy...

Brilliantly theatrical, tragic yet tender, From These Green Heights is an extraordinarily kaleidoscopic journey through the lives of two families and four decades...

Salman Rushdie's work of magic realism follows the young hero Haroun as he sets off on his journey atop a flying bird to save a princess, end a war of darkness, defeat an evil lord and bring happiness to his city...

Discover how Shakespeare spent his infamous ‘Lost Years’. Possibly...

It began as a sudden strange fancy... Polly Perks had to become a boy in a hurry. Cutting off her hair and wearing trousers was easy. Learning to fart and belch in public and walk like an ape took more time...

This hilarious spoof of the classic mystery novel is as warming and intoxicating as a glass of Victorian eggnog - a comedic Christmas cocktail of Gothic ghosts, ghoulish gasps, gorgeous gowns... and geriatric gimps...

Uncle Vanya is arguably the first great modernist drama, full of ambiguities and contradictions, delicately balancing the tragic and the absurd, the farcical and the hauntingly poetic...

Farce arises from confusion over the identity of the visiting inspector. The local hotel has a guest who is charging all his expenses to the crown and who is clearly important, so the officials are eager to distract him from anything which might arouse his suspicions...

An orphaned girl, hopelessly in love with a young man who longs for freedom, determinedly strives to achieve what she wants while staying within the parameters of honour...

Coraline is a young girl who moves to an old house with her parents. One rainy day, she discovers a locked door that leads to the unoccupied neighbouring apartment...

Shakespeare's famous battle of the sexes will burst onto the tranquil Thameside setting of The Fountain Gardens...

This brand new version of the traditional story follows Dick and his Cat from their home village to London, and then on to Morocco...

Sex, murder, revenge and much use of dramatic irony create a world in which characters of questionable moral purpose wisecrack on the edge of the grave...

Our production is musical, magical, funny, moving and exhausting...!

Two hundred years ago, a writer was born. Her family would grow to give us three of the greatest writers this country has known: Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Their lives unfolded, for the most part, in the village of Haworth...

Moscow, 1938. A dangerous place to have a sense of humour; even more so a sense of freedom. Mikhail Bulgakov, living among dissidents, stalked by secret police, has both...

The nostalgic, quintessentially English tale of four friends: kind and cultured Ratty, mild-mannered Mole, sage and solitary Badger and the crazy, conceited Toad...

Willy Russell's much loved classic comedy centres on Rita, a forthright and frustrated hairdresser hungry to know 'everything' and Frank, the disillusioned Open University tutor assigned, at first reluctantly to teach her.

In the rain-soaked streets of modern Denmark, civil unrest is simmering...

Plunging into the mind of a man whose grasp on reality is gradually fading. Is André living in his own flat or that of his daughter Anne...?

Exploring one of literature's most stormy relationships, between Tom (T. S. Eliot) and Viv (Vivienne Haigh-Wood). The play follows the turbulent and emotional conflict between this tragically mismatched couple...

This fascinating study of the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West is based on their correspondence over 20 years, from 1922 until 1941...

We all know about Henry VIII - or think we do. But what was Shakespeare's take on the key event that shaped his world?

Written at Queen Elizabeth I’s command, this perennially enjoyable and rollicking farce offers laughs galore. Sir John Falstaff – Shakespeare’s most-loved comic character...

The King of Navarre and his three closest Lords take an oath to study for three years, during which time they must not speak to a woman - forgetting that the Princess of France, and her three ladies, are due to arrive...

Wheelchair-bound Mrs Bramson rules her remote Essex bungalow like a tyrant. A stranger arrives: the enigmatic Danny...

In abdicating power, King Lear loses all...

Self-styled Parisian lothario Bernard has three fiancees - each airline hostesses with frequent 'layovers'...

Witty, bawdy and romantic, As You Like It is the Bard’s great comedy of love...

A comedy of love, fidelity, reality and the stage ...

A true classic and one of the most celebrated American plays of the twentieth century...

Antonio, a merchant of Venice borrows from Shylock, a money lender...

At turns satirical, funny and deeply moving...

‘The Weir’, by Conor McPherson, has been widely acclaimed. The play is set in a rural pub in the west of Ireland...

Raggi and her friends spend their free time in the mountains playing games of Vikings, dragons and war...

The UK premiere of the most authentic vision of the lost Shakespeare play The History of Cardenio. Leading scholar Gary Taylor has made a lively, credible, theatrically viable reconstruction of Shakespeare and Fletcher's 1612 play...

As summer guests assemble at a country house for the staging of an avant-garde play, artistic temperaments ignite to reveal a more entertaining drama behind the scenes...

The arresting opening lines of both story and play describe how Gregor, a hitherto unremarkable young man, wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into...

In a small provincial theatre, a cast are getting ready to perform Shakespeare's Macbeth until everything grinds to a halt...

Shakespeare's mystical final play will be brought to colourful life with fabulous costumes and original music in the RSS 's latest outdoor production...

On the brink of World War II, nine-year-old Eva is sent to Britain for refuge from Nazi Europe, with little more than a suitcase and an identity label...

"...England, that was wont to conquer others Hath made a shameful conquest of itself..."

If ever there was a "timeless" classic tale, this is surely it...

Robert Aldrich's 1962 film Whatever happened to Baby Jane? tells the story of Blanche and Jane Hudson...

The tragic story of Shakespeare’s star-cross’d lovers still resonates across the ages and strikes a chord in every heart...

Macbeth' is a play about fear. When first performed in 1606, belief in witches and supernatural intervention in the governance of the realm suggests that this play would have held a real sense of immediacy and danger for the audience...

Mix a classic Hitchcock film with carefully crafted slapstick, four fearless actors playing over 100 roles and you have "The 39 Steps"...

Richard and Anthea are the lucky couple who seem to have all the good fortune fall into their lap...

Shakespeare's most popular and delightful comedy – set largely in a wood outside Athens and culminating in a massed wedding...

It's 1956, and Philip Larkin, one of England's most famous post-war writers, has just arrived in Hull as the University Librarian...

To mark the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI.

A lively cheerful slapstick comedy, set in 1950’s at Christmas.

Hedda has youth. Hedda has beauty. Hedda has love. Hedda has everything any woman could want...

RSS Young Actors Company welcomes you to a double bill of cutting edge...

Welcome to beautiful rural Connemara, where violence, murder and suicide are local recreational activities...

True love? True hate? As villainy intervenes, will true love survive?