AS THE nights start to draw in, grab your diary and plan some brightness in your winter by attending some local amateur-dramatic shows next month.

The south is fortunate enough to have a hugely successful and thriving theatre scene offering the chance to see excellent plays at a fraction of the cost of professional theatre.

The Hamble Players kick off their autumn season with Jeffrey Archer's Beyond Reasonable Doubt from October 5 to October 9 at Hamble-Le-Rice Memorial Hall.

Group member Patric Howe says: "This is much more than a courtroom drama. It is a compelling love story and it's got the lot - laughter, tension and tears."

Tickets £6.50 Box office: 01489 574915.

COMIC chaos is on the cards for RAODS. The group celebrates the 70th anniversary of its formation in 1934 with Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce. An evening of marital misfortune and mayhem in three bedrooms simultaneously on view will be witnessed by the audience in this innovative play, which runs from October 5 to October 9 at the Plaza Theatre, Romsey.

Tickets from £4. Box office: 01794 512987.

A TOUCH of Thomas Hardy comes to Winchester with Chesil Theatre Company performing The Day After the Fair from October 11 to October 16.

By Frank Harvey, this drama is based on Thomas Hardy's short story On the Western Circuit.

The setting is late 19th-century Wessex. When an illiterate servant girl meets an attractive stranger at the local town fair, she persuades her mistress to write romantic letters on her behalf.

The love affair blossoms but with whom has the stranger fallen in love - the servant or the letter writer?

Box office: 01962 877977