BESIDE THE SEASIDE

REDLYNCH Players are performing Beside the Seaside,acompilation of short plays loosely themed around the seaside, until tomorrow.

Three playlets come from Deckchairs by Jean McConnell, each featuring two actresses. Alternatively funny and poignant – each has a distinct ‘twist in the tail’. Late Frost,which tells the tale of two lifelong friends coming to terms with the bereavement of a husband, while Shoppers features two well-heeled ladies who like nothing better than some retail therapy. Doggies is an amusing insight into the lives of two dog walkers from very different walks of life.

Norma by Alun Owen features two lovers meeting illicitly on a park bench, contrasting with Resting Place by David Campton – a touching scene of an elderly couple contemplating their final resting place after a lifetime together.

A Talk in the Park by Alan Aykbourn sits five strangers on separate park benches, each with their own troubles, but vying for the attention of those around them, while The Nannie, a monologue by George Melly sees Nannie considering her holiday plans with her young charge in a pram.

  • Tickets: 01725 510283

AS YOU LIKE IT

This play examines the human capacity to endure. Rosalind, the daughter of an exiled leader,falls in love with Orlando.

Separately the two are banished from their homeland by Rosalind’s dictator uncle.

In the wild depths of the forest they find unexpected freedom and love.

Rich Rosalind, falls in love with Orlando at a wrestling match, but her uncle, jealous of her popularity, banishes her from court. Disguised as a boy she seeks out her usurped father in the Forest of Arden.

Here she meets Orlando again and,in her disguise, counsels him in the art of love.

Awonderful night of cross dressing fun, romance and slapstick from Titchfield Festival Theatre in The Great Barn, it runs from Wednesday until Saturday May 31.

PROOF

DAVID Auburn’s Pulitzer-prize winning play, which explores the world of mathematics and mental illness, is brought to Southampton by Maskers next week.

Catherine, the daughter of an esteemed Professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago, has just laid her father,Robert, to rest.

Once a gifted, ground-breaking professor,Robert lost his sanity and died after suffering a prolonged mental illness.

Catherine is brilliant in her own right, but her academic goals have been thwarted by her responsibilities to her ailing father and hidden by her inclination towards lethargy.

Aware that she may have inherited the same aptitude for mathematics as her brilliant father,she worries that her undiscovered genius might also be the tell-tale symptom of the same affliction to which he succumbed.

When Hal (a devoted student of Robert’s) discovers a pad of paper filled with profound, cutting-edge calculations, it is assumed to be the work of the late Professor,but Catherine claims to have written the mathematic proof herself.

Perhaps if she can overcome the demons that suppressed her father,she can live up to her potential and achieve her own greatness?

  • Proof by David Auburn is at Maskers Studio Theatre in Shirley from Monday to Saturday. Tickets: 0333 666 3366 or online at maskers.org.uk