CityLife

Plays in the park

SINCE 1987 The Dukes theatre company in Lancaster have made an enviable reputation for themselves when it comes to large-scale walkabout events.

It's even been suggested that they boast the biggest such events in the world and past successes have included A Midsummer Night's Dream, Robin Hood, The Hobbit, The Wind In The Willows, The Jungle Book, Around The World In Eighty Days and Don Quixote.

This year's adventure is Arabian Nights - Tales From The 1001 Nights, beginning Friday (Jul 6) and running Monday-Saturday until August 11 in Lancaster's Williamson Park.

The writer, Les Smith, who also penned last year's Don Quixote and the thing about outdoor productions, believes that ''the outdoors is a venue for the assertive, for bold gestures in staging, props, singing and dancing - anything you can do to make it bigger, in fact.

''On the other hand, the problem we had with the stories from the 1001 nights is that there are, obviously, too many of them!

''I felt that you really had to keep the very dramatic central strand, of the young and beautiful Sharazad having to tell the Sultan a new story every day if she is not to be killed, but apart from that I picked seven of the stories that I myself enjoyed and that were feasible to mount.

''So there are a couple that are pretty well-known, a couple that some people in the audience might be familiar with and a couple that not many people will know at all.

''I hope we've chosen judiciously and that the weather will be kind to us. It always has been in the past and last year we only lost two performances, which is not bad over a whole British Summer!''

Please call 01524-598500 for more details or to book.