Twenty years is a long time but director Lucy Bailey has patiently waited two decades to get her hands on Noel Coward's Tonight At 8.30.

After falling in love with the series of nine one-act plays in her 20s, the director has been desperate to put them on ever since.

Finally, after years of being told no by the Noel Coward estate, she got the answer she wanted.

"It always seemed when I tried to get them somebody else already had them but were too afraid to put them on," she says.

"This show is borne out of a huge desire to do them. In some ways this is the biggest thing I've done, it's the fulfilment of a relationship which has been on hold for 20 years."

The plays, which Coward created so he and muse Gertrude Lawrence could continue their success without the monotony of the same script every night, flit from the bickering music hall performers in Red Peppers to the domineering wives and downtrodden husbands of Fumed Oak.

While the plays have languished since an Eighties West End production received tepid reviews, Bailey's cast of nine will take on just six of the plays, shown in two triple bills.

The first bill is The Astonished Heart, later adapted for Brief Encounter, Family Album, a cynical piece of Victorian nostalgia with songs, and Red Peppers. The second consists of Shadow Play, Hands Across The Sea and Fumed Oak.

"When I read them I was so surprised, it's just not what I expected from Coward," Bailey says. "I expected funny drawing room comedy, a comedy of manners, but these had a really modern voice."

While Bailey reckons it'll be hard to judge whether the audience leave feeling fulfilled by the unusual arrangement or "confused by the bittiness", theatre-goers should be in safe hands.

Bailey has been quoted in the past as saying you are only as good as your last show. By this reckoning, the glowing reviews for her staging of Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare's Globe earlier this year, which saw one critic from The Independent declaring it the best production Shakespeare's Globe had ever seen, should leave ticket-holders feeling confident.

Starts at 7.45pm, various matinees 2.15pm. Call 01243 781312