Photo Flash: In Rehearsal with Rose Theatre Kingston's CURTAINS

Ida's family is throwing her a birthday tea for her eighty-sixth birthday. Their efforts to be cheerful and make the event a success verge on the desperate. Ida is racked with pain and feels she has lived too long. As the painfully laboured celebrations go on, her third daughter Susan returns unexpectedly after an absence of 25 years. Tensions immediately flare between the sisters, whilst Ida struggles to recognise her.

As the party comes to an end, the family disperse leaving Katherine remembering the pact she made with Ida not to let her suffer into old age... When the family returns, old prejudices and rivalries are forced into the open in this at times hilarious, painful and moving picture of a family in turmoil.

Lindsay Posner directs Leo Bill (Michael), Caroline Catz (Susan), Jonathan Coy (Geoffrey), Tim Dutton (Douglas), Wendy Nottingham (Margaret), Saskia Reeves (Katherine), Sandra Voe (Ida) and Marjorie Yates (Mrs Jackson).

Stephen Bill won Drama Magazine's award for Best Play, alongside Most Promising Playwright from both Evening Standard Theatre Awards and Players London Critics' Awards for Curtains. His other playwrighting credits include The Old Order, Piggy Back Riders, Naked in the Bull Ring, The Bottom Drawer, Over the Bar, Over a Barrel, Cassie and What the Heart Feels. His television writing includes Eh Brian It's a Whopper, Marjorie and The Preacher Man, The Darling Buds of May, Broke, The Locksmith and Maisie Raine.

Lindsay Posner's directing credits include The Lie, The Truth, Dinner with Saddam, Communicating Doors (Menier Chocolate Factory), Abigail's Party (Menier Chocolate Factory, Theatre Royal Bath, Wyndham's Theatre, UK tour), The End of Longing, Speed the Plow (Playhouse Theatre), Hay Fever (Duke of York's Theatre), Harvey (Theatre Royal Haymarket), Relatively Speaking (Wyndham's Theatre), A Little Hotel on the Side (Theatre Royal Bath), Other Desert Cities, The Winslow Boy and Noises Off (The Old Vic), The Turn of the Screw (Almeida Theatre) and Uncle Vanya (Vaudeville Theatre). He was Associate Director of the Royal Court from 1987-1992 where his productions included Death and the Maiden (which transferred to the Duke of York's Theatre and won two Olivier Awards), Colquhoun and McBryde and The Treatment.

For tickets, visit: www.rosetheatrekingston.org

Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan