Empire Theatre, Halstead. Tel: 07778 025490
Sunday 24th October, 7.00 for 7.30pm MAGNIFICENT SEVEN Ticket £14.00

Friday 12th November 7.30 for 8.00pm, MUTTON 2 Tickets £12.00. "Slick-moving, full of self-mockery is hilarious" Mutton's first visit took the Empire by storm and left our normally reserved audiences begging for more. Slick, witty and spot on. Mutton is definitely a top class act. The girls return to perform their "NEW" show.

The Quay Theatre, Sudbury, Tel: 01787 374745
Friday 30th July 8.00 pm. THE HAMSTERS. Tickets: £17.00 No Concessions. The Lean Mean Rockin’ Machine. Voted the UK’s best blues/rock band, and the leading interpreters of the music of Jimi Hendrix and ZZ top, we are delighted that The Hamsters put us on their tour list. Featuring selections form their new DVD, The Curse of the Killer Hamsters this will be rocking good evening.

Saturday 31st July 7.30pm. NOWHERE BOY 98 minutes (15). Lennon – Based on the novel by John's sister Julia Baird with the script penned by Matt Greenhalgh, Nowhere Boy possesses an enormously strong emotional undercurrent that is missing from many films of the biopic genre. The Lennon legend has risen to almost unparalleled mythical heights within our culture and Greenhalgh does a superb job at humanising the story, so much that you forget that you are watching a film about a legend in the making, but rather the story of a young boy caught between the women he loves. Kristin Scott Thomas

Sunday 1st August 3.00pm & 7.30pm. Five Star Productions presents: IN THE MOOD. Tickets: £12.00 Friend £11.00. Following sell outs across the Nation, they swing into town with the best of Swing from Benny Goodman, Glen Miller, Sinatra to Jools Holland’s style of Jazz and Blues. If you enjoy the fat sound of saxophones and brass, this is the day for you.
“Fans will revel in what is on offer!” Encore Magazine.

Tuesday 3rd August 2.00pm & 7.30pm. ITS COMPLICATED 120 minutes (15). Nominated for best comedy Golden Globes. During his son's college graduation, Jane hooks up with her ex-husband, Jake, who's married to a younger woman. As if being your ex's mistress isn't tough enough, Jane also finds herself drawn to Adam, a smitten architect.- Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin

Friday 6 August 8.00pm. Milkbottle Productions presents: THE INVASION OF SUDBURY - THE FINGERS OF FATE, In a double bill. Tickets: £7.00 Friends and students £5.00. From the pen of Robert Crighton two new works.

Saturday 7 August 8.00pm. Opus Anglicanum presents: THE SEEDS OF LOVE. Adventures in Collecting English Folk Song. Tickets: £10.50 Friend £9.00. Special Price with John Kirkpatrick £15.00. Five men a capella with a programme of folk song arrangements by Vaughan Williams, and by Butterworth, Sharp and Grainger, together with diaries, letters and writings, evoke the wonder and excitement of these early twentieth-century collectors. This is an influential moment in English music. Linked together by narrator, recounting stories of their search of the English countryside in amusing and touching anecdote, this evening covers the critically important first thirty years of the twentieth century.

Sunday 8th August 1.00pm. THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG 97 minutes (U). A fairy tale set in Jazz Age-era New Orleans and centered on a young girl named Princess Tiana and her fateful kiss with a frog prince who desperately wants to be human again.

Friday 13 August 8.00pm. Routes Music presents: JOHN KIRKPATRICK, Traditional English Music. Tickets: £9.50 Friend £8.00. Special Price with The Seeds Of Love £15.00. A solo evening with John guarantees an evening of variety and entertainment of the highest quality. His background with the Albion Band, Steeleye Span, Richard Thompson Band, Brass Monkey and Band of Hope gives him a pedigree second to none. Described by Folkworks as ‘one of the major figures of the English folk scene’ , who are we to argue.

Saturday 14th & Sunday 15th August 2.00pm. HISTORY OF ANIMATION. There are four different events. Choose one or as many as you like. Special Offer for all four sessions Tickets Adult £18.00 Children £12.50.
Saturday 14th August 2.00pm. This will be a fun and interesting day for all ages looking at the History of Animation from the earliest pioneers up to the present explosion of Asian Anime. Come and see Gertie the Dinosaur from 1914, Felix the Cat, Betty Boop innovative political cartoons from Czechoslovakia including work by Jan Švankmajer. Short films will be interspersed with a talk and slides. We will be covering a broad spectrum of animation; stop frame, clay, pin cushion, sand and computer animation. Looking at American, European and Asian films. Tickets Adult £8.00 Children £5.50 No other concessions. With Tea and Biscuits and Squash.
Saturday 14th August 7.30pm. SESSION TWO FANTASIA. Tickets £5.00 Children £3.50 no other concessions An innovative and revolutionary animated classic from Walt Disney, combining Western classical music masterpieces with imaginative visuals, presented with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The eight animation sequences are colorful, impressive, free-flowing, abstract, and often surrealistic pieces. They include the most famous of all, Paul Dukas's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" with Mickey Mouse as the title character battling brooms carrying endless buckets of water. Also included are J.S. Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor"; Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite"; dinosaurs and volcanoes in Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring"; the delightful "Dance of the Hours" by Ponchielli with dancing hippos, crocodiles, ostriches, and elephants; and Mussorgsky's darkly apocalyptic "Night on Bald Mountain."
Sunday 15th August 2.00pm SESSION THREE YELLOW SUBMARINE. The most original and inventive feature-length animated cartoon since the days when Walt Disney was still thinking up innovations. As Disney demonstrated in "Fantasia," and as the underground has abundantly proved for the past decade, there is no form of film with more freedom than animation. You can do absolutely anything you want with movement, dimension color, shapes, perspective and anything else that occurs to you. Unfortunately, most animated cartoon makers are content to reproduce the real world. So there's a recognizable jungle in "The Jungle Book," and Tom and Jerry chase each other through an unmistakable living room. The beauty of "Yellow Submarine" is that it casts this objective universe aside and sails in a world of pure fantasy. The strange creatures and designs that inhabit Pepperland are simply a delight to the eye.
We see strange dimensions. The Beatles are adrift on the sea of holes, and since all holes have an in and an out, you can go into any hole right side up or upside down and come out sideways to everybody else. This is all perfectly clear when it's written about in the English language (how else could Alice describe Wonderland?), but only an animated cartoon can stretch space and bodies so that you literally see Ringo and George zapping back and forth between dimensions. They also get caught in a time trip, speeding up and slowing down time in correct Einsteinian fashion, growing older and younger while their submarine travels the fourth dimension.
Then comes a series of adventures as the Beatles engage the Blue Meanies in battle, win, free Pepperland and use melodies to make flowers grow. Along the way, they also sing 11 Beatles songs, which are illustrated with the most fanciful animation, and they indulge in shameless puns. Tickets £5.00 Children £3.50 no other concessions
SESSION 4 Sunday 15th August 7.30pm SPIRITED AWAY. "Miyazaki's Spirited Away" has been compared to "Alice in Wonderland," and indeed it tells of a 10-year-old girl who wanders into a world of strange creatures and illogical rules. But it's enchanting and delightful in its own way, and has a good heart. It is the best animated film of recent years, the latest work by Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese master who is a god to the Disney animators.
Because many adults have an irrational reluctance to see an animated film from Japan (or anywhere else), I begin with reassurances: It has been flawlessly dubbed into English by John Lasseter ("Toy Story"), it was co-winner of this year's Berlin Film Festival against "regular" movies, it passed "Titanic" to become the top-grossing film in Japanese history, and it is the first film ever to make more than $200 million before opening in America. I feel like I'm giving a pitch on an infomercial, but I make these points because I come bearing news: This is a wonderful film. Don't avoid it because of what you think you know about animation from Japan. And if you only go to Disney animation--well, this is being released by Disney. Tickets £5.00 Children £3.50 no other concessions

Friday 20th August 2.00pm & 7.30pm. INVICTUS 133 minutes (12A). Nelson Mandela, in his first term as the South African President, initiates a unique venture to unite the apartheid-torn land: enlist the national rugby team on a mission to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

Saturday 21st August 2.00pm & 7.30pm. CRAZY HEART 112 minutes (15). Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) is a broken-down, hard-living country music singer who's had way too many marriages, far too many years on the road and one too many drinks way too many times. And yet, Bad can’t help but reach for salvation with the help of Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a journalist who discovers the real man behind the musician.

Saturday 21 August 8.00pm. CLOSE TO YOU. Tickets: £10.50 Friend £9.00. Bringing the amazing haunting vocals of Karen Carpenter to life, Anneli Stockwell accompanied by Andrew Weedon, as Richard Carpenter, on piano. Authentic costuming and styling take the audience back to the 70s to relive all their greatest hits, including ‘We.ve onlyn just begun’, ‘On Top Of The World’, ‘Only Yesterday’, ‘Superstar’, ‘For All We Know’, ‘Jasmbalaya’ and ‘Goodbye To Love’ to name but a few. Come and enjoy a wonderful summers evening and recall just how good these songs were.

Sunday 22 August 4.00 and & ?.30pm. Johnny Mans Productions presents: ROCK AROUND THE 60S. Tickets: £17.50 Friend £16.00. The ‘ultimate’ 60s show, featuring The Honeycombs, Vanity Fare, Special Guest star, Craig Douglas is hosted by ex Chicory Tip lead singer Richard Headingley. A non stop romp down memory lane by the artists who were actually there.Good music played with authenticity and skill that no fan will want to miss, with plenty of humour and fun to join in and sing along to.

Saturday 28th August. A SINGLE MAN (12A) 101 Minutes. A startling surprise. Tom Ford's debut as a director tells, in exquisite images, a very personal story, based on a short story by Christopher Isherwood. What makes everything fly so high is a fantastic performance by Colin Firth.

Mercury Theatre Company, Colchester, Tel: 01206 573948
Monday 16 August CHRIS DEAN’S SYD LAWRENCE ORCHESTRA ‘LIVE’ Tickets:£13 / £16.50 / £17.50 / £18.50. A captivating performance packed with sizzle, transporting you back to those glory days of live music. Featuring the phenomenal talent of the ‘Best Big Band In The Land’ (Big Bands International) playing the music of Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Billy May, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and many, many more.

Tuesday 17 August THE SEARCHERS Tickets: £13 / £16.50 / £17.50 / £18.50 After five decades and over 40 million record sales, this remarkable quartet is still touring the world with their unique talent. Sweets For My Sweet, Needles and Pins, Don’t Throw Your Love Away and When You Walk In The Room plus many of their original album recordings, B-sides and a selection of other collector and well-known favourites feature in this highly entertaining concert.

Wednesday 18 August ACKER BILK & HIS PARAMOUNT JAZZ BAND Tickets: £16 / £19.50 / £20.50 / £21.50 Don’t miss this opportunity to see a true British legend! Acker Bilk’s career is one of British music’s success stories - his first smash hit, Stranger On The Shore, was the first ever record to reach number one in the US and the UK simultaneously, and his popularity since then remains as great as ever.

Thursday 19 August WEST END GOES BALLROOM Tickets: £13 / £16.50 / £17.50 / £18.50 Two of the nation’s favourites - the Magic of the Musicals and the Beauty of the Ballroom, are brought together in one exciting new show of song, dance and live music. The show features six performers who have over 20 years experience in London’s West End and established a formidable reputation as ‘The West Enders’. Hear the hits from the world’s most popular musicals; thrill to the jaw-dropping ballroom dance.

Friday 20 August AN AUDIENCE WITH JAMES NAUGHTIE Tickets: £13 / £16.50 / £17.50 / £18.50 This distinctive Aberdonian takes you behind the scenes of the Today programme, the nation’s noticeboard and talks about his life in newspapers and broadcasting that has taken him around the world, thrown him together with an extraordinary cast of characters and given him a ringside seat at many of the events that have shaped our time.

Saturday 21 August ELKIE BROOKS – 50TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR Tickets: £16 / £19.50 / £20.50 / £21.50 Quite simply one of the most successful and popular singers the UK has ever produced.
Now celebrating her 50th year in music, she is still proving to be one of the most powerful and versatile vocal talents of our generation. With numerous hit singles, million selling albums and many awards, her annual tours are a treat for fans old and new.

Wednesday 25 to Saturday 28 August THE KITCHEN Tickets: £6 per person / £4 concession
Passions run higher than the stifling temperatures in a busy restaurant kitchen. Amidst the clattering plates, bustling waitresses and half-cooked chefs, Peter attempts to resume his frustrated affair with married English waitress Monique.
Company actor and Associate Director, Tony Casement (Journey’s End, The Promise) directs Wesker’s first ‘kitchen sink’ play; dramatising everyday life for the working classes as a reaction to
the middle class dramas being presented around him.

Friday 27 & Saturday 28 August THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE Tickets: £6 per person / £4 concession A funny and thought-provoking story of love, justice, sacrifice and war. Michael, an abandoned child, is raised by a peasant woman but when his biological mother arrives to reclaim him a Judge uses a chalk circle to settle the dispute. Gari Jones, director of Accidental Death of an Anarchist, The Lonesome West, Under Milk Wood and Depot, is joined by Miranda Bell, Mercury Company Actor and Practitioner, who directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream in last year’s FRESH.

Tuesday 31 August to Saturday 4 September LOVE'S A LUXURY Tickets: £9.50 - £20.50. Concessions available Charles Pentwick, a flamboyant and successful theatrical producer is always surrounded by gorgeous actresses and attractive chorus girls. There’s only one problem. His wife is a jealous and suspicious woman. With just cause! To escape being henpecked, he and his actor friend Bobby Bentley flee to a country cottage. Expecting to be greeted by the housekeeper, they find she is replaced by her pert and pretty daughter, Molly, and tantalising French starlet, Fritzy Villiers.
Events spin deliriously out of control when Mrs Charles Pentwick arrives, unannounced and Bobby decides to dress up and impersonate the housekeeper! This glorious comedy is a delicious cocktail full of zest and fizz – guaranteed to send the audience home with a spring in their step and a twinkle in their eye.

Monday 6 to Saturday 11 September MURDERED TO DEATH Tickets from £9.50-£20.50. Concessions available A hilarious comedy thriller packed with whodunnit twists and turns, side-splitting antics and ever-increasing merriment and confusion.
Set in a country manor house in the 1930s with a colourful cast of characters including Bunting the Butler; Charles Craddock with the prerequisite stiff upper lip; the bumbling local inspector and his Constable and a well-meaning local sleuth Miss Maple, who seems to attract murder wherever she goes. Add to this a high society debutante, a shady French art dealer and his moll, and you have the perfect recipe for uproarious fun and hysterical happenings.
But following the mysterious death of the house’s owner, will the murderer be unmasked before everyone else has met their doom, or will the audience die laughing first?!

Wednesday 8 to Saturday 11 September BUNNY Tickets: £9.75 / £6 concessions Katie is a feisty and intelligent 18 year old. When her boyfriend Abe gets into a fight, his mates insist they track down the kid who attacked him. What starts as an adventure becomes more dangerous as Katie is thrust into a journey she’ll never forget. The complexities of multicultural inner-city life are vividly exposed in this remarkable coming-of-age tale by exhilarating writer Jack Thorne.