Vivaldi gave us The Four Seasons, but between them Bradford Theatres (The Alhambra and St George's Hall), West Yorkshire Playhouse, and Bingley Little Theatre have got three cracking seasons coming up. Space doesn't permit a list of every show, but at least we can whet your appetite. So get out your cheque-book and make some ticket space behind the clock on the mantelpiece...

THE ALHAMBRA

The season gets off to a rocking start with Smokey Joe's caf from September 22 to the 26th, a revue of Leiber and Stoller's greatest hits of the 1950s and 1960s. That's followed on the 29th with five nights of 1970s-style disco in the shape of Boogie Nights, starring Shane Ritchie and Lisa Maxwell.

Billy Liar co-author Keith Waterhouse has a new play, Good Grief, opening on October 5. It stars Penelope (The Good Life, To the Manor Born) Keith.

The Hungarian National Opera is performing Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Puccini's dramatic story of love and betrayal, Tosca, between October 14 and the 17th.

Bradford's own multi-talented Stage 84 is giving The Sound of Music from October 21 to the 24th, with proceeds going to the Bradford Millennium Scanner Appeal.

John Tavener's wondrous music The Protecting Veil forms part of a triple bill of ballets by the Birmingham Royal Ballet which rounds off October. They are also doing Romeo and Juliet.

Oscar Wilde's very own 'Carry On' comedy The Importance of Being Earnest, starring Dora Bryan, Liza Goddard and Geoffrey Davies, has a five-night run from November 16.

The Bradford Catholic Players' production of Calamity Jane whip-cracks-away from November 23 for five nights plus a matine on the 28th starting at 2.30pm.

December limps in with a malevolent chuckle and hair-raising grin. Yes, Richard III is back with Robert Lindsay taking the starring role in this Royal Shakespeare Company production. How will he do the opening 'Now is the winter of our discontent' soliloquy? The last time the play was here Derek Jacobi stunned the audience by lying prone and howling with wicked laughter.

ST GEORGE'S HALL

Apart from four Hall Orchestra shows in October, November and December, Vivaldi's Four Seasons gets a candle-lit rendition by the Mozart Festival Orchestra on Guy Fawkes Night.

Stand-up comedians booked include Lily Savage, Paul Merton, Freddie Starr, Stephen Frost, and the master of them all the incomparable Ken Dodd, whose Happiness Show tickles its way into town on December 30.

The Bluetones' re-scheduled gig takes place on October 29. Ireland's Mary Coughlan burns your heart out on November 25, and on December 17 the theatre's management will be hoping that Status Quo don't literally blow the roof off. Oh, and The Drifters will be Under the Boardwalk on October 14.

Bradford's own Black Dyke Mills Band present 'Music for Everyone' on September 19, while Thornton Vocal Union supported by the J J B Sports Leyland Band bring in the season of the holly and the berry on Sunday, December 13 at 2.30pm.

WEST YORKSHIRE PLAYHOUSE

Sensational. That's the only word for what artistic director Jude Kelly has in store from September through to February.

The theatre's first ensemble company including Sir Ian McKellen and Clare Higgins will be staging Chekhov's finest play, The Seagull; Nel Coward's Present Laughter; and Shakespeare's valedictory play The Tempest.

That's not all. Tony Harrison's mythical romp The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus gets a four-week run by Barrie Rutter's Northern Broadsides company, starting on October 19.

There is more. The European premiere of a play by US film comic actor Steve Martin, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, is scheduled for September 15. The play is set in Bohemian Paris in 1904, where Picasso takes on Albert Einstein in a battle of wits over painting, probability, lust, and the future of the world.

More is yet to come. If I said Boubil and Schonberg, chances are someone would think of a couple of foreign strikers. If I said Les Misrables, however, the penny might drop. The two Frenchmen who wrote the world's most famous musical (as well as Miss Saigon), also created Martin Guerre, which ran for more than 700 performances in the West End and won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical in 1996. A new production of this musical starts at the Playhouse on December 8.

Finally, Steven Berkoff's one-man show Shakespeare's Villains gets another welcome outing at the Courtyard Theatre on September 21.

BINGLEY LITTLE THEATRE

The season starts on September 14 with James Robson's Falling Short, and ends on July 10 with last of six performances of The Importance of Being Earnest.

In between there are six other productions. The highlights are Alan Bennett's Single Spies, which combines An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution - Bennett's two plays about the spies Guy Burgess and Sir Anthony Blunt; Sheridan's The Rivals; and Tennessee Williams' ambiguous A Streetcar Named Desire.

The Bennett play runs from October 26-31; Sheridan's from December 7-12; while A Streetcar cruises Bingley from March 1-6 next year.

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