Take Away The Lady by Scaramouche Theatre will be at Forest Arts in New Milton next month

AMATEUR sleuthing and suspense will keep audiences guessing as Scaramouche Theatre Company performs Take Away the Lady at New Milton’s Forest Arts.

Set in the 1980s, Take Away the Lady features a wealthy but dysfunctional family, several of whom are haunted by an event so traumatic that one member has since married but kept it secret from her husband.

Returning home from prison after serving 15 years for allegedly murdering his mother, Matthew finds his three sisters, his wife and his father waiting for him. Still protesting his innocence, Matthew's arrival prompts the question of who did kill mother – one of his sisters or even his gentle father? Accusations and hypotheses abound, but it takes an apparent suicide, and a good deal of amateur sleuthing, before the truth is revealed and the lady can be taken away.

The play, by Jimmie Chinn, will be Scaramouche’s fifth production since the theatre group was set up by director Anne Ponting in 2019. Its first production, Noel Coward’s Private Lives, was staged in Milford and was so well received that the company began a tour of local theatres. Sadly, after performances in Ferndown and Verwood, the tour was halted by Covid.

Post-lockdown, the company has presented one play a year, alternating between comedy and suspense. Last year’s production, Scaramouche’s first at Forest Arts, was the comedy Natural Causes. The production has since been nominated for an Accolade of Excellence from NODA.

Take Away the Lady will be at Forest Arts on 4th and 5th April. Tickets are £14. For more information and bookings visit forest-arts.co.uk or contact the box office on 01425 619983.