THE award-winning Marco Players will be 25 years old next season, and to celebrate the company's Silver Jubilee, there will be four productions instead of the usual three at Chorley Old Road Methodist Community Church.

The season will start with a production of Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy, from November 9 to 12. The Winslow Boy is based on the real life story of a young naval cadet who is accused of stealing a five shilling postal order.

Convinced of the boy's innocence, the Winslow family persuade the country's leading lawer, Sir Robert Morton to take on the defence. As the case proceeds, it challenges many long-accepted legal notions and sets off a national frenzy- and exacts a heavy price on the family.

David Mamet, who directed the most recent film adaptation said: "I think The Winslow Boy is one of the most immaculately crafted plays I've read. It's a brilliant drama, and it's very close to tragedy, which is one of the hardest things to construct." The play is directed by Alan Macpherson.

From February 15 to 18, 2006, Natalie Crompton will be directing Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling. Hilarious and touching, the play is set in a beauty parlour in Louisiana.

Following this is a production of The Odd Couple by Neil Simon.

Jason Crompton will be directing this comedy classic from April 5 to 8, 2006.

The final production is Alan Ayckbourn's A Chorus of Disapproval from May 31 to June 3. This is a clever, multilateral saga about a production of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera by a local amateur dramatic society, crawling with a modern suburban version of the twisters, shysters and adulterers presented by Gay with such brio.