Southwold & Aldeburgh Summer Theatre 2025
Rain or shine, we look forward to welcoming everyone to our 2025 Summer Theatre season at Aldeburgh Jubilee Hall and Southwold Arts Centre.
TO BOOK: Tel 01728 343344.
Evenings 7:30pm + Thurs & Saturday matinees 4pm.
TO BOOK: Tel 01728 343344.
Evenings 7:30pm + Thurs & Saturday matinees 4pm.
ALDEBURGH - 21st to 26th July
SOUTHWOLD - 30th July to 9th August
Ultimate VE-Day Farce by Philip King
In an idyllic English village, the resident busy-body is convinced that the ex-actress vicar’s wife is having an affair. Classic mistaken-identity mayhem follows, with a handsome visiting actor, a baffled Bishop, a clueless locum priest, an escapee German POW, and a madcap chase with almost everyone claiming to be the real vicar. On the West End opening night, three German flying bombs exploded nearby. No-one budged until the final curtain. 1940s Brits really did “Keep Calm and Carry On” – Laughing!
ALDEBURGH - 28th July to 9th August
SOUTHWOLD - 13th to 16th August
Original Psychological Thriller by Patrick Hamilton
Written in 1938, set in dark and dangerous, foggy London, before electric lighting, the title, and its derivative, “gaslighting” has become part of our modern lexicon. Hamilton’s original play is indeed a dark tale of a marriage based on deceit and trickery, and features a husband trying to drive his already fragile wife insane. But, as we learn his hidden motive, an even more terrifying murder-mystery is revealed, with a final twist that shows Hamilton’s mastery of the genre. A West-End hit, and still one of the longest running Broadway plays.
ALDEBURGH - 11th to 16th August
SOUTHWOLD - 20th to 30th August
Comic, Cruel, Classic by Alan Ayckbourn
Centring on the love triangle between two women and one man - although the unrequited, obsessive affection of the downstairs lodger possibly makes it a love square! In a play that includes passion, comedy, and some violence, Ayckbourn handles a potentially tragic theme in a black romantic comedy that will jar both your funny bone and your heart. “This memorably bruising comedy is a Private Lives for the nineties.” (The Guardian).
ALDEBURGH - 19th to 30th August
SOUTHWOLD - 3rd to 6th September
Hit West-End WWII Romcom by Terence Rattigan
On his wedding-eve, young Earl Harpenden has put up a drunken American soldier he met the night before. When Harpenden’s fiancée turns up, the lonely American flirts outrageously, thinking she is Harpenden’s ex. This sparkling Romcom with the laughs of a perfect Farce shows both the author’s dazzling stage-craft and his belief that, even in the darkest of times, there is still love, hope and laughter. “A masterpiece … outstanding in every way” (The Times)