THE Jurassic coast can now boast a second summer play festival – just a few miles east of Sidmouth, with its Manor Pavilion summer season, the Marine Theatre at Lyme Regis welcomes the return of the professional Gilroy Theatre Company, with a season of five plays, from 28th July to 28th August.

The first is The Late Edwina Black, a classic and very atmospheric Victorian-set thriller by William Dinner and William Morum, running from Thursday 23rd July and Friday 24th to Monday 27th, Tuesday 28th and Wednesday 29th (this is the running period for all five plays; there are concerts and other events at the weekends).

Set in 1895, this murder mystery, which opened in London in 1949, takes place the day before the funeral of Edwina Black, a domineering woman whose sudden death is discovered to have been caused by arsenic poisoning. Inspector Martin calls to interview her husband Gregory, her companion Elizabeth, and her housekeeper, Ellen. Gregory has long endured the domination of his wealthy wife, but is in love with Elizabeth. Edwina’s death gives them freedom, but at what cost?

Alan Ayckbourn’s time-travelling, black comedy-thriller, Communicating Doors, runs from 30th July to 5th August, followed by George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man, from 6th to 12th August. This is the classic comedy of the “chocolate cream soldier.” In this play, subtitled An Anti-Romantic Comedy, Shaw makes fun of romantic ideals of love and warfare, satirising conventions of love, military honour and class.

Dead Guilty, by Richard Harris, from 13th to 19th August, is a tense psychological study of guilt and obsession. And the season ends with Ladies Day, Amanda Whittington’s funny and poignant story of four fish-filleting women who head for Ladies Day at Royal Ascot, the year it relocated to York. It runs from 20th to 26th August.