AN AMBITIOUS York drama group has made a quick changeover to stage its second production in the city, starting tonight.

The York Shakespeare Project will be performing The Taming Of The Shrew at Joseph Rowntree Theatre only six months after putting on Richard III there.

The project which intends to show all the Bard's 37 plays in approximate chronological order in York over 20 years, has already staged its production of The Taming Of The Shrew, which involves a gender role reversal with women playing the main male parts and vice versa, at Pocklington Civic Arts Centre last weekend.

Kit Bird, producer for The Taming Of The Shrew and project treasurer, said: "It shows how far we have come that we can make such a quick turnaround as this.

"Richard III was an enormous effort, but we learnt so much about how to put on a production that we were able to do The Taming Of The Shrew so quickly. "Many of the people involved in Richard are here again - some moving from front to back stage and vice versa - and we have also attracted some very talented new blood. Everything has run reasonably smoothly - there are always hiccups - and this is down to all the hard lessons we have learnt. And then, of course, we will be doing it all over again for Comedy Of Errors."

The Taming Of The Shrew will be performed at Joseph Rowntree Theatre, Haxby Road, York, at 7.30pm, from tonight to Saturday, with a Saturday matinee, at 2.30pm.

Updated: 10:22 Tuesday, June 17, 2003