OLDHAM Coliseum's Autumn Season opens with a bawdy, brash and boisterous musical comedy.

The theatre's Chief Executive Kenneth Alan Taylor will direct this modern version of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

"A fun-filled evening with a dash of 'rudery'" is the description given by Taylor.

Taylor is unashamedly populist in his approach, but slips in stronger stuff when he thinks it appropriate. Challenging works such as Brimstone and Treacle, East is East (before the film) and Keeping Tom Nice have had a place in the Coliseum's recent programming.

Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick -- the story of Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor -- follows.

This is directed by Alan Rothwell -- still remembered by many as Ken Barlow's brother in Coronation Street.

Terry Johnson's comedy had a smash hit run at the National Theatre and makes its regional premiere at the Coliseum.

The play comes with the warning that it is not suitable for children.

This year's Coliseum pantomime is Cinderella. The Coliseum's pantomimes, directed by Taylor, are justly renowned as terrific family entertainment.

There will be plenty of audience participation, crazy costumes and great scenery with not a soap star in sight.

Misery, adapted from the novel by Stephen King, completes the season of in-house productions.

Alan Rothwell directs what has been described as "a compellingly cruel thriller". It charts how a best selling novelist wakes up to a nightmare after his car skids off the road.

On October 1, Sian Phillips, who premiered the musical Marlene at the Coliseum, stages her one-woman show Falling in Love Again.

Phillips most recently has played the Baroness in the Wishbone Film Cinderella and Meg in the Magician's House on BBC TV.

The Ken Dodd Show the same month is already a sell-out.

In November, the London Classic Theatre brings the Charlotte Keatley play My Mother Said I Never Should, which follows the lives of four women through the social changes of the twentieth century.