Local actress Zoe Teverson will appear in Twelth Night at Bromley Amphitheatre

While the main Churchill Theatre in Bromley undergoes a summer of refurbishment, all action transfers to its 500-seat outdoor Amphitheatre at Churchill Gardens, next to the venue.

Twelth Night will be performed during the summer season at Bromley Amphitheatre

A packed programme of live events from outdoor Shakespeare to Proms in the Park is being organised over the whole of July and into August following last years successful run of A Midsummer Nights Dream which completely sold out.

The season starts on July 9 and 10 with a Pink Floyd tribute and the first of two Shakespeare plays, Twelfth Night, once again directed by Harry Denford, who brings a full cast of professional actors who recently toured with this production around large scale UK theatres.

He has directed more than 180 plays including in a recent season three at the famous Shakepeares Rose Theatre in London.

For Twelfth Night he has cast local West Wickham actress Zoe Teverson, an ex-pupil of Langley Park School and one of the first students to attend the BRIT stage school. Zoe plays the lead role of Olivia following a season at The Rose.

Harry is a firm believer in producing Shakespeare in the traditional way, with no changes to the language yet stage and present it in a way that anyone watching Shakespeare for the first time is fully engrossed in the experience and is able to follow and enjoy the experience.

He states the two Shakepeare plays chosen for this season were rehearsed to extract as much humour from the text without changing it and having a large cast of professional actors and established stand-up comics in the company meant this was easily achieved.

In a recent Radio 4 interview, Harry caused a stir around Shakepeare purists when he was asked what advice he would give to someone to help them understand what is going on in a Shakespeare play and he replied: Do what I do, switch off and just follow the plot from every third or fourth sentence that comes out of the actors mouths and follow their movements on stage.

Other events over the summer season at Bromley Amphitheatre include outdoor cinema which will show The Life of Brian, a David Bowie tribute concert and ending on August 13 with Proms in the Park with fireworks.

The highlight of the season is the return of last years production of A Midsummer Nights Dream which has a full cast of 17 professional actors, dancers and, in keeping with tradition, all the parts of the mechanicals are played by professional stand-up comics (roles which would have been played by Jester types).

One of the organisers of this summer programme, Mike Fox, who also runs Bromley Comedy Club at the Churchill Theatre thinks putting this great outdoor arena to its full usage with the stage set around a lake will be a truly magical experience for the audience.

Tickets for all these events are available for the Churchill Theatre box office or my visiting www.bromleyamphitheatre.com