SPRING, BATH: A CLASSIC Seventies comedy, vintage Gilbert and Sullivan and a new stage version of a modern best seller are among the treats to look forward to at Bath

Theatre Royal in the post-panto season.

Mike Leigh's caustic domestic comedy Abigail's Party was an instant hit when it first appeared as a BBC Play for Today in 1977.

Leigh created Beverley, the hostess from hell. She and husband Laurence have invited new neighbours, Tony and Ange and apprehensive divorcee Sue for a party. Sue's teenage daughter Abigail is having a party of her own across the road.

As the drinks flow the anxieties and tensions reach breaking point.

It's a celebration and good riddance to all the bad taste of the Seventies.

Gilbert and Sullivan fans will relish Carla Rosa Company's colourful production of HMS Pinafore. It combines the talents of one-time Dr Who Colin Baker as Sir Joseph Porter, the Admiral who sat at his desk, never went to sea and so became the ruler of the Queen's Navy, and the highly acclaimed actor Timothy West, who directs.

First produced in 1878, the operetta was the fourth collaboration between Gilbert and Sullivan and, in modern parlance, their first blockbuster hit. It satirised politicians of the day and lampooned the class system.

Pinafore's Captain pledges his daughter to marry Sir Joseph while the Captain is in love with humble Buttercup. His daughter, Josephine, spurns Sir Joseph for an ordinary seaman.

It all gets hilariously complicated.

Some of the best-known songs include Little Buttercup, For He is an Englishman, Sir Joseph's explanation of how he came to be First Lord of the Admiralty without going to sea and the Captain's declaration that he never uses a word with a big big D (well, hardly ever).

In contrast Stephanie Cole stars in The Shell Seekers, a new play by husband-and-wife team Terence Brady and Charlotte Bingham based on Rosamunde Pilcher's best-selling novel.

The story is set in London and Cornwall between the Second World War and the present. It deals with Penelope Keeling and her family over three generations and in particular centres on a painting called The Shell Seekers, an ancestral legacy which threatens to tear the family apart.

Another classic favourite, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, has a cast headed by Wendy Craig as the formidable Lady Bracknell and co-starring Josephine Tewson and Frank Middlemass.

In March the sixth Shakespeare Festival is launched with an adventurous programme of familiar and unconventional slants on the Bard.

For more details visit the theatre's website www.theatreroyal.org.uk

Edited by Jo Bayne