What’s on

Wed 30 Sep • 7.30pm • Full £14 Concs £12 • Professional Theatre

An hour of genre-spanning entertainment based on real queer history! Queer Eyes on Queer Lives tells three original stories that dive into the rich and often neglected history of queer people.

The Last Ride of Julie d’Aubigny – a slapstick comedy that explores the life of trouser-wearing duelist and pioneering opera 16th century singer Julie d’Aubigny and how she balances her busy love life as her relationships come to an explosive conclusion.

Gladiators – a science-fiction romance featuring two characters, Balacrus and Francis, who are whisked from their respective time periods of an unknown purpose. As they come to learn what connects them, they are pushed ever closer by their mysterious abductors.

Who Killed Karl Heinrich Ulrichs – an absurdist murder mystery comedy that follows three doctors who investigate the history of a recent murder victim, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. All is not as it seems, as the corpse has more to say than the doctors let on.

Watson’s House Productions is an upcoming production company that works with fresh talent to produce original stage material in the South-West. This production is a tour after debuting at the 2026 Cheltenham Fringe.

Thu 15 Oct • 7.30pm • Full £16 Concs £14 • Professional Theatre

“A mighty spirit is about to reawaken. Yours.”

Derek Jarman: film-maker, painter, gardener at Prospect Cottage, activist, writer… his influence remains as strong as it was on the day AIDS killed him in 1994. But his story, one of the most extraordinary lives ever lived, has never been told. Until now.

This vibrant solo play by Mark Farrelly (Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope / Howerd’s End) brings Derek back into being for a passionate, daring reminder of the courage it takes to truly live while you’re alive. A journey from Dungeness to deepest, brightest Soho and into the heart of one of our most iconoclastic artists.

Jarman’s works include taboo-breaking films like Sebastiane, Jubilee and Caravaggio, pop videos for the Pet Shop Boys (It’s A Sin and Rent), his extraordinary borderless garden in Dungeness, his shocking last paintings, and his unforgettable final film Blue, consisting of a single continuous frame of blue and chronicling what it’s like to lose your sight… but never your artistic vision.

Nominated for Best Solo Performance In A Play, Off-West End Awards 2022.

★★★★★ ‘beautiful, fun and relentlessly inspiring. Jarman is a fearless portrait of a key figure in LGBTQ+ history, and one of this country’s greatest artists’ Queer Guru

★★★★★ ‘Jarman admonishes us to ‘be astonishing’. And that’s exactly what Mark Farrelly is. Fabulous, thought-provoking stuff’ Bum on a Seat

Wed 28 & Thu 29 Oct • 7:30pm • Admission £15 • Professional Theatre

Presented by Live Wire Theatre

Loosely based on Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale – an Aesop Fable style story about anthropomorphic chickens – Dougie Blaxland’s Chauntecleer & Pertlotte – subtitled.

‘A Beasty Babel Fable’  tells the quaint but utterly absurd story of how a jilted hen exacts eye-watering revenge on a faithless cockerel.

Delivered in language combining elements of Chaucer with the ‘nonsensical gobbledy-gook’ pioneered by comedy greats Stanley Unwin and Kenneth Williams, Chauntecleer & Pertlotte has been described as ‘comedic and literary gold’.

With just two actors playing all 24 of the diverse human and animal characters that populate Blaxland’s outlandish ‘farmy-warmy’ world Chauntecleer and Pertlotte is a ribbald romp of a play performed at ‘breakneck speed’.

Winner of Best New Play at the Brighton Festival, Chauntecleer & Pertelotte has also been nominated for the Scotsman Fringe First Award and the Popcorn New Writing Award at the Edinburgh Festival.

Sat 31 Oct • 7.30pm • Full £15 Concs £13 • Professional Theatre

Presented by Lumenis Theatre

Maurice and Hermia a migrant married couple make their home in the UK. Maurice is very proud of working as a care worker in an elderly care-home. Hermia, instead, struggles with motherhood and caring for their two-year-old alone but has found a friend in Darya, a woman in her late 70s, a resident of the care home also a migrant.

When during a period of global crisis Maurice is forced to choose between his family and having to live in the care home where he works, he tries to keep his marriage and the relationship with his two-year old son afloat.  Four years later, with further restrictions looming for migrant care workers, Maurice and Hermia take stock of their life choices.

A passionate play about a family, and their choices during a global crisis inspired by real life testimonies voices the human stories behind migration when the world is against them.

Fri 6 Nov • 7.30pm • Full £16 Concs £14 • Professional Theatre

Two compelling one-act plays exploring family, love and identity with a generous side-helping of seafood…

Lobster Tale 
By Alison Farina
Performed by Alex Olivierie

After twenty years of life in the UK, American-born playwright and theatre-maker, Alison Farina spent eight months living back in the US dealing with the aftermath of parental health crisis.

Looking at the challenges of caring for ageing parents, cultural identity and the US Healthcare system, Lobster Tale is the story of those days, told through laughs, tears, over-sharing and a slight obsession with crustaceans.

Sea Wall
By Simon Stephens
Performed by Giles de Rivaz

In this acclaimed one-act play, Alex’s story begins full of clear light and smiles, as he speaks about his wife, visiting her father in the south of France, and having a daughter. But happiness rests on a knife edge, and one moment changes everything in this moving exploration of love and loss.

An intimate evening of storytelling.

Wed 11 – Sat 14 Nov • 7.30pm • Full £15 Concs £12 • Professional Theatre

“You asked me for a ghost story. Here is one.”

1816. The year without a summer.

The sun has vanished, the rain will not stop, and five young writers are trapped inside Villa Diodati: Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori. To pass the storm-dark nights, Byron proposes a ghost story competition, and Mary begins to write the story that will become Frankenstein.

As the storm outside rages, Mary’s imagination brings Victor Frankenstein and his abandoned Creature to life, blurring the line between the Villa and Mary’s created world…

As WhimsiCo’s second foray into gothic literature, Mary’s Frankenstein is an imaginative new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, interweaving the legendary summer of 1816 with the full story of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature he cannot bear to love. An exciting and inciteful new take on the classic novel, about grief, ambition, artistic creation, and the terrible responsibility of bringing something to life.

Thu 19 Nov • 7.30pm • Full £10 Concs £8 • Professional Theatre

By Elisa Calvert

‘Well, there’s a big difference between you and me in that I’m dead and you’re not.’

After a chance meeting on a random rooftop one day, Ashley and Joel discuss life, death, and choice in this 50-minute, one-act play described as “darkly funny” and “earnestly human”.

Starring Elisabeth Calvert and Tobias Elsom-Cook.

Sun 29 Nov • 3pm • Admission £15 (Ages 2 and under go free) • Professional Theatre

Santa & Snowball are very excited to be bringing their magical Christmas show to The Rondo this December!

I don’t know if you know, but filling the stockings of every child in the world in just one night is a HUMONGOUS undertaking. It requires planning, team work, dedication and – of course – a sprinkling of Christmas magic. These last few years Santa has taken to recce-ing ahead of the big drop to help Christmas Eve run as smoothly as possible. He brings with him Snowball, his brand new reindeer handler, she’s keen to get things right, though is a bit prone to mishap. We’re sure her talents will shine through in the end and she may even achieve her dream of turning into a snowball.

Together, they’re hoping to shave valuable seconds off their busy Christmas Eve schedule by gathering crucial stocking location and roof landing intel ahead of time. Are you up to the challenge of helping our festive heroes with their quest? Get a peek into their enchanting world, see Snowball play with her favourite snow elf circus toys, enjoy a Q&A with Santa and more. They’ll also answer the big questions of the Santa story and show glimpses of their Christmas magic.

Created and performed by Stewart Wright with Sallie Chedburn.

‘A funny and touching sprinkle of Christmas magic, which you’d be hard pressed not to be enchanted by, whatever your age.’  Bristol 24/7 

‘The most magical and authentic Father Christmas you’’ll ever meet’  Bristol Post

‘It was totally magical. We had such great feedback from our members and kiddies. The set and costumes are incredible. We loved it!’  Soho House

Thu 3 & Fri 4 Dec • 7.30pm • Admission £18 • Professional Theatre

‘Put it down, you fool! Do you want to look through a dead man’s eyes?’

Two chilling and thrilling tales from M R James, the master of the English ghost story.

In A View from a Hill a pair of old binoculars reveal the grisly history of an idyllic stretch of English landscape. In The Treasure of Abbot Thomas a treasure-seeker comes face to face with unspeakable horror at the bottom of ancient well.