A DUO of Alan Ayckbourn premieres and a new play by Torben Betts form the fulcrum of the summer season at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough.

Ayckbourn, the theatre's artistic director, will be premiering two new comic dramas in the Round auditorium: GamePlan, in repertoire from May 24 to August 25 and FlatSpin, from June 28 to September 8.

Ayckbourn's 58th and 59th plays respectively, they will be directed by the author himself. Going under the collective title Damsels In Distress, the two shows use the same set and are written to be performed by the same cast but, apart from that, they are entirely separate plays.

In GamePlan, Ayckbourn asks what happens if a plan goes wrong and you start to lose control of a game where you don't know the rules? When Lynette's business collapses and her husband disappears into the blue, she finds herself a single parent with a rapidly dwindling lifestyle. The future looks bleak but she reckons without teenage daughter Sorrel's last-ditch attempts to save them both. Will she succeed? Or will her desperate "game plan" plunge them both into even greater trouble?

In FlatSpin, Joanna is looking forward to a night of romance in her luxurious riverside apartment with the good-looking stranger from next door. How can she possibly go wrong? Except that the flat isn't hers; her name isn't Joanna, it's Rosie; and heaven knows what the good-looking stranger from next door is really after. Nothing is what it seems and, instead of romance, Rosie suddenly finds herself in considerable danger.

The new season opens with Torben Betts's Clockwatching, the first of two collaborations between the Scarborough theatre and Surrey's theatre-in-the-round, the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, where the show opens this month before arriving on the East Coast on May 11.

In repertoire until July 11, Clockwatching follows the fortunes and misfortunes of one family as it grapples with the trials and temptations that life throws its way in the form of marriage and death, adultery and divorce in a 12-month span.

Torben Betts's first play at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, A Listening Heaven, was premiered during his time as the theatre's Writer-in-Residence in Summer 1999. This time, the production will be directed by Sam Walters, who was last in Scarborough to direct Noel Coward's Private Lives last year.

The second collaboration between the two theatres will feature the same cast as Clockwatching in a production that will start life at the SJT in August before transferring to the Orange Tree Theatre. More details will follow.

Lunchtime entertainment will be served in the restaurant in the form of Sarah Phelps's Amaretti Angels, from June 5 to July 17, and Robert Shearman's fifth comedy for the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Inappropriate Behaviour, from June 8 to July 20.

Plans for the remainder of the summer season are being finalised with a variety of visiting productions, live music and films in line to be complemented by teatime tales and tiny time tales.

Booking opens on March 26 on 01723 370541.