By DOREEN CROWTHER BOLTON audiences should feel very much at home during the current run at Oldham's Coliseum Theatre. Not only is the play, A Passionate Woman, directed by Lawrence Till, the Octagon's Artistic Director, but a number of the actors in the play are favourites at Bolton's professional theatre. Zena Walker who plays Betty was at Octagon for the hugely successful production of Talking Heads 2 in January when she played a middle-class widow who is reduced to penury.

Matthew Vaughan who plays Mark has been seen often at the Octagon notably as Cougar Glass in The Fastest Clock in the Universe, in The Suicide and as one of the lords/witches in Macbeth. Another Octagon "regular" is John Griffin who plays Craze in A Passionate Woman. Audiences will remember him particularly for his work in A View From the Bridge, Ghost Train, Edward II, Titus Andronicus and Charley's Aunt.

Christopher Wilkinson who played Mr Boo in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice at the Octagon and Eli Jenkins/Mog Edwards/Lord Cut Glass in Under Milk Wood plays Donald in A Passionate Woman. The play, by Kay Mellor, author of the TV series Band of Gold, was a West End hit.

The Coliseum presents the North West premiere of the play which shows how Betty, a middle-aged, homely woman has lost touch with the passion and impulsiveness of her youth.

On the day of her only son's wedding she takes refuge in the loft of the family home. An old dress conjures up memories of the Fifties and the ghost of her lost lover.

The Coliseum promises that A Passionate Woman will be "spectacularly staged with a final scene of high drama".

The play opens tonight and runs until November 23. A review of the production will appear in Friday's BEN.

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