There is a busy summer season ahead at York Theatre Royal with something for everyone as CHARLES HUTCHINSON finds out.

YORK Theatre Royal's pantomime stars are coming out to play.

First, dame Berwick Kaler takes up an invitation to perform his first Theatre Royal role outside panto for 20 years and is now ensconced in rehearsals for Hobson's Choice. Next comes news that panto villain David Leonard has signed up for Damian Cruden's production of Noel Coward's elegant comedy of bad manners, Hay Fever.

In the first repertory show of the summer season, from May 23 to June 11, Leonard will play David Bliss, the self-centred head of the Bliss family, who are the essence of blissfully ignorant, hammy English conceit. Each member of the family independently invites a guest for the weekend, whereupon their country-house guests are alternately amused, ignored, humiliated and ultimately abandoned.

A calamitous party of a different kind forms the summer's second rep show in the main house, this one presented in association with the Theatre Royal's company in residence, Pilot Theatre. Twenty-five years ago Hampstead Theatre gave Mike Leigh a locked rehearsal room, five actors and six weeks to develop a play. The result was the much loved Abigail's Party, which now will be revived by Pilot's artistic director Marcus Romer, director of The Beauty Queen of Leenane last autumn.

Running out of control from July 8 to 23, the bitter-humoured Abigail's Party pitches man-eating Beverly into a social get-together for married couples in her low-cut dress and too much make-up, triggering a time-bomb of emotional tension.

York Musical Theatre Company goes Rockin' The Boat in the season's opening amateur production, Guys And Dolls, the Frank Loesser musical set in 1940s' Manhattan. The game is on for the gambling and romantic exploits of Sky Masterson, Nathan Detroit and co from April 27 to May 7.

Amid the familiar names, there is a main-house debut too. The Wrestling School visits York for the first time to perform Howard Barker's The Fence from June 29 to July 2. Set in a world of rising frontiers and illegal immigration, the play was inspired by the long-distance fence under construction in the Gaza Strip to separate Palestinian and Jewish communities.

Dance, opera and music play their part too. English Touring Opera presents Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte on May 9 and Mary Queen Of Scots the following evening; the Shepherd Building Group Brass Band, last seen on the Theatre Royal stage in Brassed Off last autumn, returns on May 11; Leeds company Phoenix Dance Theatre's new triple bill, Inter Vivos, includes artistic director Darshan Singh Bhuller's Eng-er-land on May 13 and 14. York Opera stages the operatic double bill of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci on June 21, 22, 24 and 25.

The Theatre Royal will join in the festivities for Royal Ascot in York with the veteran jazz double act of Cleo Laine and John Dankworth on June 14 and 15 and Northern Ballet Theatre's volcanic, voluptuous, visceral Dangerous Liaisons on June 17 and 18.

Call 01904 623568 for tickets.

Updated: 15:48 Thursday, March 10, 2005