• WEST Meon Theatre’s production of Calendar Girls celebrates the company’s 20th anniversary at Theatre Royal Winchester until tomorrow night.

Written by Tim Firth and based on the Miramax film, Calendar Girls has become the fastest-selling play in British theatre history. Directed by Mary Dawson, the current chair of the board of TRW, Calendar Girls tells the true story after the death of Annie’s husband, John, from leukaemia.

She and best friend Chris resolve to raise money for a new settee in the local hospital waiting room. They persuade fellow WI members to join them in posing nude for an ‘alternative’ WI calendar – and wind up going global.

Box office: 01962 840440 or visit www.theatreroyalwinchester.co.uk

  • A YOUNG Jane is rejected by her guardian and sent to a school for orphans in Charlotte Bronte’s, Jane Eyre, adapted for the stage by Polly Teale.

When she is older she becomes a teacher there and through various trials becomes a governess to Adele, who is the ward of Mr Rochester, a rich land-owner.

Gradually Jane finds herself falling in love with Rochester, who asks her to marry him, but he has a dark secret that eventually brings disaster on the pair. Can their love survive and bring them the happiness they have both been denied?

RAODS perform the play from Tuesday to Saturday at The Plaza in Romsey.

Tickets: Call 01794 512987 or www.plazatheatre.com

  • FAREHAM Musical Society perform Gilbert & Sullivan next week for the first time in their long history.

This hilarious tale of love, corruption, marriage and heroics brings to life some of Gilbert and Sullivan’s most colourful and popular characters from Ko-Ko, Pooh-Bah and Nanki-Poo.

The most famous of all of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta may be set in Japan, but focuses entirely on English subjects and institutions.

The society will perform at Ferneham Hall in Fareham from Tuesday to Saturday before opening the first G&S Festival of the south at the Berry Theatre, Hedge End on September 30.

Ferneham Hall tickets: 01329 231942 or www.fernehamhall.co.uk

Berry Theatre tickets: 01489 499899 or www.theberrytheatre.co.uk

  • THE original ‘angry young man’ of British theatre left a trail of rage behind him after an excursion to the Havant area – but now his most famous play is to be revived there.

John Osborne, then a struggling actor, rented a hall at Hayling Island in 1950 to stage a season of plays, but when bills could not be paid because of poor attendances, he was hauled before Havant Magistrates’ Court, but fled without settling his £14 debt.

Twenty years later, that court building was converted into the Bench Theatre, which was then adopted as the name of the company that occupied it. And the group, now based at the Spring Arts Centre in Havant, is to stage Osborne’s Look Back in Anger.

The play, which prompted the press officer at the Royal Court Theatre in London to coin the phrase ‘angry young man’ to describe Osborne, is set in a squalid midlands bedsit in the 1950s.

Jimmy Porter, an intelligent but disaffected man of working-class origin, lives in the squalid Midlands bedsit in the 1950s with his uppermiddle- class wife, Alison. Their good-natured Welsh neighbour tries to keep the peace but the marriage is threatened by the arrival of a young actress.

Look Back In Anger will be performed from Wednesday to Saturday.

Call 023 9247 2700 or visit www.thespring.co.uk