A FEAST of music will be performed at a Romsey theatre this month as flowers start to bloom and the temperatures rise.

The concerts and productions on show at The Plaza Theatre will include a variety of styles from blues music to a romantic comedy drama and a brass band.

A three-year-run of off-Broadway musical The Last Five Years is set to be followed by the Michelmersh Silver Band and an evening of George Gershwin by the New Foxtrot Serenaders.

The Last Five Years tells the story of a love affair, marriage, and eventual breakup of a young novelist and struggling actress.

It was released as a film starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan earlier in the year and the lovers will be played by Kerry Butcher and Steven Lily at the Plaza Theatre.

Meanwhile the Michelmersh Silver Band - which performed at the venue over Christmas - will perform a celebration of early summer titled Windows of the World.

A little over a year ago, when  the band teamed up with its current resident conductor, Gareth Pritchard, it was already enjoying the most successful period in its almost 130 year history. Gareth has travelled from his home in Wales each week to take rehearsals at the band’s Timsbury base.

Keen to show off the fruits of this relationship, the band decided to perform a summer concert at the Plaza, and Gareth put together a programme thats musically challenging but audience-friendly. What nobody could have foreseen when planning for the concert started, was that it is to be Gareth Pritchard’s ‘swansong’ and his last performance on British soil before moving to Florida with his family to begin work promoting and teaching brass band music to school children in the USA.

The ‘Windows of the World’ concert will take the audience through a host of musical styles from around the globe. From the quintessentially English Country Scene by Goff Richards, to Peter Graham’s Gael Force with more than a passing nod to Riverdance, concert-goers will experience glimpses of Japan, the Amazon Rainforest and South America, through the musical ‘Windows of the World’ of the titular piece.

Ironically perhaps, given his imminent move to the USA, Gareth has also chosen to include Philip Sparkes’ Barn Dance & Cowboy Hymn along with Leonard Bernstein’s Somewhere from the musical West Side Story in a concert that will clearly show that Michelmersh Band’s loss is very much Florida’s gain. 

Finally the New Foxtrot Serenaders will present Strictly Gershwin, featuring toe-tapping numbers including I've Got Rhythm and They Can't Take That Away from Me.

Guest star Anita Harris spent her childhood in Bournemouth and has since gone on to perform on he West End stage and the television since the early 1960s.

The Last Five Years will be performed on May 14, 15 and 16 and tickets cost £10 while the Michelmersh Silver Band will showcase Windows of the World on May 20, with tickets again available for £10.

Finally, tickets for the Strictly Gershwin performance on May 23 cost £17. For more information visit www.plazatheatre.com.