Halifax Thespians reveal their programme of plays for this year at the Playhouse

Twist is a comedy thriller will keep audiences guessing right to the end and is from Tuesday March 12 to Saturday March 16.

David is a mild-mannered accountant, who sees a sensational way of making a fortune by writing a kiss-and-tell biography about his venomous wife, Sarah, the nation’s favourite actress from the hit soap Doctors and Nurses.

He then realises that his book will do even better if she’s murdered first. Unfortunately, a few obstacles get in his way.

Welcome to our Village: Please Invade Carefully will be performed from Tuesday April 23 to Saturday April 27 in the studio bar.

A low-tech, low-profile experimental alien invasion of a middle English village ruffles very few feathers among acquiescent residents.

That is until two young women form a resistance group. This laugh-a-minute version of the Radio 4 sitcom becomes a rheatrical experience in the intimate surroundings of the studio bar.

Six actors take on 21 different parts between them.

In The Revlon Girl, the Thespians journey to Wales eight months after the Aberfan Disaster of 1966 in which 144 people died, including 116 children.

A group of bereaved mothers meet weekly to talk, cry and even laugh without feeling guilty.

At one of their previous meetings they’d felt they had let themselves go.

Afraid the people would think them frivolous they secretly arrange for a representative from Revlon to come and give them beauty tips. The Revlon Girl will run from Tuesday May 14 to Saturday May 18 with a Saturday matinee.

The Thespians travel back in time again in Nell Gwynn.

In London, 1660, King Charles II has exploded onto the scene with a love of all things loud, extravagant and sexy.

At Drury Lane a young Nell Gwynn is causing stirrings amongst the theatregoers. Nell Gwynn charts the rise of an unlikely heroine from her roots in Coal Yard Alley to her success as Britain’s most celebrated actress and her hard-won place in the King’s heart.

It runs from Tuesday June 18 to Saturday June 22 with a Saturday matinee

A different view of the coiners – the subject of Benjamin Myer’s novel Gallows Pole which, in turn, inspired a BBC TV drama – is told in The Coiner’s Wife.

It runs from Tuesday July 23 to Saturday July 27, with a Saturday matinee.

From a remote weaver’s cottage on the bleak Yorkshire moors, a gang of counterfeiters, the Cragg Valle Coiners, launch their nefarious scheme that threatens to unsettle the currency of 18th-century England.

Bound in marriage to their leader, known as ‘King’ David, Grace Hartley is torn between the forces of love, duty and conscience, while at the same time struggling with motherhood and the need to keep hunger at bay.

The Coiner’s Wife, written by Thespian member Maurice Claypole, is an extra show performed as part of the Calderdale Year of Culture, a celebration of Calderdale’s 50th Anniversary.

It will be a year to inspire, entertain and showcase Calderdale and its creative people.

The Bench will be performed in the Playhouse Studio Bar between Tuesday, August 27 and Saturday August 31 with a Saturday matinee.

Joe is in crisis, his life a swirling scribble of obligations. For five minutes every day, he finds a little solace and peace, alone on an isolated bench.

Sandy is mourning the death of his wife, Maggie. The bench is his memorial to her memory. As both attempt to impose their purpose on the bench, so begins an epic conflict of passive aggression.

"The Halifax Thespians will pull out all the stops this season. There’s something for everyone at the Halifax Playhouse,” said a spokesman.

To book tickets visit www.ticketsource.co.uk/HalifaxPlayhouse, ring the box office on 01422 365998 or email: [email protected]

There is plenty of parking space and the theatre bar is open for drinks before the show.