TOM KING goes back to the Palace Theatre, where it's curtain up after an uncertain year, to find that there's a full programme aheadto guarantee bums on seats

The restored Palace Theatre, Westcliff has thrown open its doors to the public and announced a packed programme for the six months ahead.

The Palace has been closed for over a year and doubts were voiced in many quarters as to whether it had a future as a theatre.

Sceptics were confounded, however, as the curtain was raised this week on almost £100,000 worth of refurbishment, and the fullest show schedule in its history.

While the brass rails and other familiar Edwardian details of the old theatre in London Road, Westcliff have been retained, the Palace now boasts an enlarged foyer, beefed-up bar and improved toilets.

The entrance area has been dubbed the Keymed Foyer, in acknowledgement of the £35,000 contributed towards refurbishment by this local company.

Southend Council has also played a significant part, allocating £56,000 towards technical improvements, including enhancement of the lighting gantry and scenery winches.

"We have a lovely, lovely theatre, and we believe that we have a programme to do justice to it," said Roy Marsden, the Palace's new artistic director.

The programme has already kicked off promisingly. Julius Green, of the managing company Green & Lenagan, announced: "I am pleased to say that tickets for A Christmas Carol are absolutely booming. It is a highly encouraging start."

He was also able to announce that the Dixon studio theatre will have its own continuous season alongside the main house. The Dixon has previously only opened for sporadic performances.

Highlights of the new season include Prunella Scales' one-woman show An Evening with Queen Victoria, which uses the queen's own words to paint a word portrait.

Roy Marsden's directorial follow-up to A Christmas Carol will be The Merchant of Venice, the first in-house Shakespeare production to be mounted at the Palace for almost 30 years.

Two major regional companies will bring home-grown productions to the Palace for the first time.

In February, the Oxford Stage Company arrives with Making Noise Quietly, an acclaimed series of one-act plays by Robert Holman. Each play tackles the theme of warfare and the way that the spectre of all-out war has shadowed the 20th century, even in times of peace.

Exeter's Northcott Theatre Company visit in April with a new production of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. The company has made something of a speciality of Austen works, with a highly successful production of Persuasion already under their girdle.

Other main-house productions include the return of the popular and raunchy Girls' Night Out, and Nichola McAuliffe in Five O'Clock Angel, the story of the strange relationship between the Russian aristocrat Maria St Just and the tortured playwright Tennessee Williams.

Dixon highlights include the Alan Ayckbourn comedy Between the Lines, about actors preparing for a new musical and Steven Berkoff's no-holds-barred view of London life, East.

And just to show that some things never change at the Palace, February sees the return of the Southend Scout and Guide Gang Show.

Miserly mince - Scrooge (actor Robert Demeger) helps himself to the pies, above, while theatre management, directors and trust members were at the Palace's opening night too, left.

Pictures: MAXINE CLARK

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