Revealed: summer season at Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre - includes world premiere of 84th Alan Ayckbourn play

The Scarborough-based playwright’s 84th play - Truth Will Out - hits the stage in August and his Just Between Ourselves opens in June. Christmas tradition at the theatre continues with a Nick Lane adaptation – this year it will be the Snow Queen. The season runs: Just Between Ourselves is written and directed by Alan Ayckbourn and runs from Thursday June 18 to Saturday October 3. Dennis thinks he’s a master at DIY, and a perfect husband. He’s actually neither of those things. When he decides to sell his car, Neil turns up as a potential buyer: he wants it for his wife Pam’s birthday. The two couples become unlikely friends, aided and abetted by Dennis’s meddling live-in mother Marjorie. It’s a collision course… Generally regarded as one of Alan Ayckbourn’s darkest and most brilliant comedies Just Between Ourselves is ‘the one with the car’. Set in a garage and a garden over four successive birthdays, Just Between Ourselves is a classic dissection of man’s inadvertent inhumanity to woman and this is a rare opportunity to see it is directed by the author. The Ladykillers is directed by the theatre’s artistic director Paul Robinson and runs from Wednesday July 9 to Saturday August 15. The sweetest of sweet little old ladies, alone at home but for a parrot with a mystery illness – and both of them at the mercy of a ruthless gang of criminal misfits who will stop at nothing to get what they want. Surely there can only be one possible outcome ... Graham Linehan’s stage adaptation of the 1955 Ealing comedy - which starred Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers – is an hilarious version of one of the greatest British films ever. The production is directed by Paul Robinson, who aims to bring to it the same stylish madcap humour that made his production of The 39 Steps a huge hit two years ago. Truth Will Out is written and directed by Alan Ayckbourn and runs from Thursday August 20 to Saturday October 3. Everyone has secrets. Certainly former shop steward George, his right-wing MP daughter Janet, investigative journalist Peggy and senior civil servant Sefton do. And all it’s going to take is one tech-savvy teenager with a mind of his own and time on his hands to bring their worlds tumbling down – and maybe everyone else’s along with them. Truth Will Out is an up-to-the-minute satire on family, relationships, politics and the state of the nation from Alan Ayckbourn. His 84th full-length play, it follows last summer’s Birthdays Past, Birthdays Present. The Snow Queen runs from Thursday December 3 to Wednesday December 30. It has been adapted by Nick Lane from the story by Han Christian Andersen, music and lyrics by Simon Slater, and is directed by Paul Robinson. For the fifth year in a row, the team that brought you off-the-wall Christmas adaptations of Pinocchio, A Christmas Carol, Alice in Wonderland and Treasure Island will present their take on Tickets for all the shows are priced from £10, and will go on sale from Friday March 13 (with priority booking for the theatre’s membership scheme, The Circle, from Friday 6 March) and can be booked at the box office on 01723 370541 or via the website: www.sjt.uk.com