PICTURESQUE Sidmouth is not only a delightful seaside resort and home to the country’s oldest folk festival, it also has the longest-running traditional summer rep season, at the Manor Pavilion theatre, this year continuing to Saturday 19th September.
For three months, with a week out for Sidmouth Folk Festival, the theatre has a weekly professional rep, including, in July, Alan Ayckbourn’s dark comedy Neighbourhood Watch (to 4th July), Francis Durbridge’s Sweet Revenge, from 6th to 11th July, and a stage adaptation by Jeremy Sams of the much-loved television series, The Good Life, from 13th to 18th July.
Neil Simon’s classic comedy, Plaza Suite, runs from 20tj to 25th July, followed by Hugh Janes’ The Haunting, a dramatisation of some of Charles Dickens’ ghost stories.
The rep season continues after the folk festival, from 10th to 15th August with Changing Rooms, a farce by Marc Camoletti, best known as the writer of Boeing Boeing.
The mood turns darker with James Cawood’s Stone Cold Murder, from 17th to 22nd August. And then there is one of the perennially popular comedies of the last 50 years, Richard Harris’ Outside Edge, a classic comedy look at the ups and downs of life on and off the cricket pitch.
Over the years, the programming at Sidmouth has moved on from the typical farce and mystery fare to include much more challenging and contemporary plays. This year’s festival includes Joe Orton’s Loot, a dazzling and satirical black comedy about what happens when two thieves hide stolen money in a coffin, after removing the corpse. Loot is on from 31st August to 5th September, and is followed, from 7th to 12th September, by Daphne du Maurier’s drama of love, jealousy and family loyalties on the coast of Cornwall.
The season finishes with one of Noel Coward’s funniest and most popular plays, Blithe Spirit, the story of a selfish man, his new wife, his late wife, and a medium who raises more spiritual mayhem than she expected. End the Manor Pavilion play festival on a note of high laughter, from 14th to 19th September.