Flying start!

A COCKTAIL of witty songs and comic verse evoking 1920/30s New York is the opening entertainment of the new Heron Theatre season.

The Wits End show is inspired by the world of the New Yorker magazine in its pre-war heyday and is packed with the work of great American songsmiths such as Gershwin and Cole Porter and includes priceless musings from the pens of Dorothy Parker, Ogden Nash and more.

Staged by the acclaimed talents of Susan Flannery and Michael Lunts, the stylish twosome get the Beetham-based venue off to a flying start tonight (Friday, 7.30pm) and tomorrow (Saturday).

Terence Rattigan's excellent In Praise of Love follows on Friday and Saturday, October 29/30 (7.30pm) performed by one of Cumbria's best theatrical outfits Ulverston-based First Team. It is a story of late-flowering love and English reticence told by an outstanding playwright. First Team director Neil Metcalfe says he's always wanted to stage the play: "I went to see it only once as a young man, more than a quarter of a century ago, and it made such an impression on me that I've wanted to present it ever since.

"I've read and re-read the script and the nagging insistence to put on the play has never gone away.

"I organised readings with various companies, made casting suggestions and even booked production dates only to find some problem or other meant cancellation.

"It might be that someone was trying to tell me something, but I like to think all that disappointment was because we weren't ready for the challenge."

Now, at long last, Neil is set to fulfil an ambition, with, as well as the Heron, additional performances at Ulverston and Staveley, and, with what he enthuses is his perfect cast: Julie Lloyd, Andrew Barrow, Graham Edwards and Danny McCarthy.

"I know I would say that, but it has made my job so much simpler to have such a talented quartet, coupled with very competent technical back-up and excellent venues for our little tour."

Neil claims the play is a Rattigan masterpiece: "People will be both amused and emotionally drained and yet emerge genuinely uplifted by the experience.

"It transports the audience back some 30 years or more to a time when politics seemed simpler. Conservatives on the right, Labour on the left and Liberals occupying what was termed the centre. And when owning a colour TV was worthy of note."

Concert versions of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe and Yeoman of the Guard join the Heron programme on November 12/13 as Occasional Opera perform Peers and Yeoman Ltd, adapted and directed by well-known local singer and performer Ann Wodeman.

The award-winning Northern Theatre Company brings its Flanders and Swann revue, the Gasman Cometh, to the Heron on November 26/27 and completing the 2004 half of the programme is At Home With The Pooters, a spot of Victorian drama and song (as serialised in Punch magazine circa 1850), staged by Free Range Theatre Company.

And so to 2005 and a ground-breaking start to the New Year for the Heron with Indigo classical music and dance from India, courtesy of South Asia Arts UK.

For full details of the season, the Heron Theatre box office is open from 10am-1pm Tuesday and Fridays. Outside those hours, contact 015395-64283.

First Team Theatre Company also performs In Praise of Love at Ulverston's Coronation Hall supper room on November 4/5 (box office 01229-587140) and the Roundhouse at Staveley on November 25/26/27.