MALVERN Theatre’s new season’s brochure holds the promise of plenty of entertainment to take audiences through the summer months with a great mix of drama and dance, music and spectacle – and Malvern Festival’s 80th anniversary presentations at its heart.

The drama kicks off with Lisa Riley, star of Emmerdale and Fat Friends, in The Naked Truth (which runs from April 27 to May 2), the next unmissable play from Dave Simpson, writer of the hit comedy, Girls Night Out.

Five very different women struggle to conquer pole dancing for a charity event to raise funds and awareness for breast cancer, with hilarious and poignant results.

Other drama for the season sees the return of Malvern favourite Liza Goddard in Hugh and Margaret Williams’ The Grass is Greener; Middle Ground Theatre Company’s production of Billy Liar; Timothy West in The Winslow Boy, one of Terence Rattigan’s most engrossing plays; Deceptions stars Michelle Collins as psychiatrist Julia Smythe playing a psychological game of cat and mouse with a young client; and Peter Bowles stars in another Terence Rattigan classic, The Browning Version, one half of a double-bill of one-act plays with Chekhov’s Swan Song.

A cast of well-known names, among them Imogen Stubbs, Annette Badland and Gawn Grainger, star in Michael Frayn’s Alphabetical Order, set in the chaotic offices of a provincial newspaper in the 1970s.

From Monday, June 8, to Saturday, June 13, the theatre will resound to the irresistible beat of toe-tapping tunes from last year’s bestselling album Dreamboats and Petticoats in a musical inspired by the album and written by Marks and Gran, the team behind Birds of a Feather, Goodnight Sweetheart and Shine on Harvey Moon.

More musical entertainment is provided when The Wales Theatre Company brings The Thorn Birds – a musical to Malvern in June and Singin’ in the Rain arrives in August.

Magic and spectacle arrives direct from a sell-out run at Sydney Opera House in the shape of Le Grand Cirque – Fantazie. The show, which runs from Tuesday, August 4, to Sunday, August 9, features world-class artistes performing a visual feast of white-knuckle stunts and breathtaking acrobatic displays.

For younger theatre-goers, Malvern Theatres Kids’ Club offers a charming selection including SeaLegs Puppet Theatre’s production of The Ugly Duckling, two shows from Garlic Theatre – The Magnificent Flying Machine in which Prof Bix Horn tries to build a flying machine out of the most unlikely things, and Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a bewitching tale full of mystery and enchantment.

Among the highlights of this year’s 80th anniversary Malvern Festival are Coronation Street’s John Savident starring in HMS Pinafore, An Evening with Donald Sinden, a new play by Malvern playwright Nick Wilkes, Jitters, specially commissioned for the anniversary, performances from Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, The Orchestra of the Swan and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the final of the Young Musician of Malvern competition, in which the six winners of heats held earlier compete for a £500 prize.

For full details of the new season, visit malvern-theatres.co.uk.