IT is 43 years since Jane Chambers launched her groundbreaking play Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, and it has been performed around the globe ever since – but never before in Salisbury. Studio Theatre is filling the gap with its production at the Ashley Road venue from Monday 2nd to Saturday 7th October.

Set on Long Island in 1980, seven friends have set up home at a secret seaside haven where they can live, and love, freely. At the time, AIDS was galloping through the US, homophobia was rife and same sex marriage was 35 years in the future. The women’s idyll is threatened by the arrival of Eva, a straight woman who has just left her husband of ten years and has no idea that Bluefish Cove, the place she has chosen to stay, is a lesbian community.

By the end of the play, everyone’s life has been changed forever.

Philippa Crundwell directs Sophie Townsend as the single Lil, George Cotterill as Eva, Clare Green as writer Kitty and Roz Skellorn as her secretary and lover Rita, Lynette Barnes as sculptor Annie and Shantell Braschler as feminist Rae, and Nickki Shepherd as wealthy and weathered Sue and Antonia Harding as her much younger lover Donna.

Performances are nightly at 7.30.