Damian Cruden tells Charles Hutchinson about the new season at the Theatre Royal.

BRIGIT Forsyth will star in The Studio world premiere of The Cello & The Nightingale at York Theatre Royal next month.

Best known for her role as long-suffering Thelma in The Likely Lads, she will play Beatrice Harrison in Patricia Cleveland Peck's play based upon the life of the celebrated cellist, who played to more than one million listeners worldwide in a duet with the nightingales in her garden in the first ever BBC outside broadcast in 1924.

Overnight, Beatrice Harrison became a household name; Delius and Elgar wrote music for her, she became a friend to the Royal Family and appeared in a film with Laurence Olivier. She never married, however, and instead her cello was her soul mate, the one thing that kept her alive but tortured her soul too.

In this play, Beatrice is at home with her sisters, looking back on her eventful life and dreaming of days gone by, always with her cello by her side.

The production will run from May 14 to June 5, directed by Susan Stern, the Heslington voice coach, radio dramatist and theatre director, with music by Christopher Madin.

Artistic director Damian Cruden says: "The play has been in development for the past 18 months. I first read an early version, and at that time it was a two-hander for a man and a woman. Now it is a four-hander with four women, and the focus started to shift once Patricia began to talk to us about her play.

"It will be wonderful to have Brigit here, with Tamara Ustinov in the cast too, and the great thing about it is that we will have four actresses, all of huge experience, doing a new piece in The Studio."

Damian welcomes the chance to counter one of the myths of new theatre. "There is this idea that new works are the domain of the young but this play will prove that is not the case," he says. "It will be a very interesting piece of theatre to create, performed by a cast at the height of their powers, and it will be fantastic to see them so close up in the Studio space."

In a second world premiere in The Studio, the first adult play by Nick Lane will be directed by Tim Welton for a June 18 to July 10 run. Lane's stage adaptations for children, Beauty And The Beast and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, have marked out his gift for comic mayhem, and The Derby McQueen Affair will take that mayhem into the world of Get Rich Quick schemes in a play set in York.

"With Nick's piece, we've been working with him on it for some time, and I'm really pleased that the theatre is presenting a new, original work by him," says Damian.

The Theatre Royal is to introduce another avenue for new writing in the Up Front showcases that will precede four mainhouse shows in the manner of film shorts in bygone cinema days. These will begin with a new 15-minute work by Dolly Dhingra, staged by the Northanger Abbey cast at the start of performances of the Jane Austen drama from June 4 to 12. Two more mini-premieres will follow in the autumn, and the fourth will be in the Spring 2005 programme.

"As part of our commitment to new writing, and our Stage Exchange project with Pilot Theatre, we will present these new works by some of the country's leading writers," says Damian. "One of the purposes behind Pilot's residency at the Theatre Royal is to develop new and younger audiences in partnership with us, and new writing will help to do that.

"It is always difficult to put on new work in the mainhouse but this way audiences can get to see new works without having to pay anything. This was the most logical way to do that, and we've decided to call it Up Front for obvious reasons."

Damian will direct the Dolly Dhingra piece in his only stage production of the summer season, with Tim Luscombe directing Northanger Abbey and Paul Clayton at the helm of Elly Brewer and Sandi Toksvig's A Pocket Dream from June 28 to July 17.

He is not leaving the Theatre Royal, is he? "No, no, there's nothing like that going on," says Damian. "Traditionally I've directed far more shows each year than any other director in this region, and I'm still doing five shows this year - and I have to develop the theatre programme, develop new work and play a part in the education programme too.

"There comes a point where if I want to maintain my level of creativity in the theatre, I have to take a step back. I haven't had my full holiday allowance in seven years, and also I don't just want the same voice harping on. It's good to have other voices, bringing in different actors and designers."

Point made, most eloquently, Damian. What's more, there is an exciting reason for stepping back from the front line temporarily. "I need time to prepare Brassed Off for the opening production of the autumn season in September, which I'm really looking forward to," he says. "This year that piece will be particularly poignant because it's the 20th anniversary of the miners' strike."

For tickets and brochures, ring 01904 623568.

Updated: 09:21 Friday, April 09, 2004