Youth theatre all set to act up

Shropshire Youth Theatre (formerly Shrewsbury Youth Theatre) is putting on A Festival of One Act Plays at The Hive arts centre in Shrewsbury over the February half-term break.

The festival will run from February 18-21 and will feature both contemporary and older plays.

The shows on February 18 and 19 will be modern adaptations of Geoffrey Chaucer's timeless classics, The Canterbury Tales. Both The Knight's Tale and The Wife of Bath's Tale have been given a fresh and funny twist.

The Wife Of Bath's Tale is a comical romp through the travails of a young and foolish knight, whose derring-do and hapless misadventures are still funny 500 years later.

The Knight's Tale involves a gang of rogues whose infighting and ceaseless treachery leads to their demise at one another's hands.

February 20 and 21, by way of contrast, will feature three contemporary plays. Firstly, Alan Bennett's dryly sardonic A Day At The Sands, a wry look at the British way of life that neatly captures a snapshot of a family struggling to hold their life together in the face of redundancy.

Susan Glaspell's Trifles is a minimalistic but eerily effective drama set in the Deep South of America. It studies themes such as misogyny, law and capital punishment through the conversation of two farmer's wives.

Finally, there is Sorry, Wrong Number, a creepy piece of film noir cleverly translated to the stage.

The festival has been produced by SYT students under professional direction and tutelage.

A Festival of One Act Plays will run from February 18-21. All performances will start at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £10 (£8 for concessions) are available directly from the Hive on (01743) 234970.

For more information visit www.shropshireyouththeatre.co.uk.