Storyhouse in the Park

Chester is an easy train ride from Manchester, and this summer, Storyhouse in the Park is a genuinely good reason to make it.

For the uninitiated, let’s catch you up. Storyhouse is a charity-run arts centre in the heart of Chester, encompassing a theatre, library, cinema and restaurant. Each summer since 2010, it has erected an open air in-the-round theatre in Grosvenor Park – often a home for Shakespeare and literary classics – and built a whole constellation of summer activity around it: cinema nights, comedy, family activities, street food and more.

Naturally, the centre of it all is the 500-seat outdoor theatre, and this year’s programme closes with its strongest card. Nell Gwynn – Jessica Swale’s Olivier Award-winning comedy about the orange seller turned Restoration actress and royal mistress – arrives in late August as the final leg of a touring co-production with Shakespeare North Playhouse and Theatre by the Lake. Rose Shalloo takes the title role, with Bryony Shanahan directing. It’s a serious, well-resourced production that would sell out anywhere. Outdoors, in the round, it should be special.

The season opens rather differently in July with Outlaws: A Robin Hood Story, a new commission from Liverpool playwright Kieran Lynn, whose Gangs of New York was one of the park’s biggest hits two summers ago. The brief was apparently ‘Ocean’s Eleven in Sherwood Forest’ – a heist comedy with folk songs, fight scenes and audience participation.

Running alongside it from mid-July is Let The Sun Shine!, a coming-of-age story set in a conservative English town on the brink of 1969’s cultural upheaval, written by Storyhouse’s own head of producing, Helen Redcliffe, making her playwriting debut and, presumably, writing for this very setting. For younger theatre fans, Peter Pan, an interactive walkabout show, runs through late July and into August.

And then there’s Moonlight Flicks, which takes over the park after dark for an August run of open-air cinema nights. The film lineup – Wicked, Mamma Mia!, Grease, Legally Blonde – is unapologetically crowd-pleasing, closing out with Wicked For Good at the end of the month. There’s also Labyrinth, for anyone who wants David Bowie in tight trousers under the stars (that’s everyone, presumably).

Food is part of the fun. In fact there’s a whole Street Food Weekend on 27 and 28 June – free entry, live music, a proper warm-up act for everything that follows. More widely across the 10 weeks, the tepee bar returns with an expanded offering – wood-fired pizzas and frozen cocktails joining the usual craft beers. The rest of the calendar fills out nicely too – comedy nights, a murder mystery after dark, morning yoga, and craft sessions for younger visitors who’d rather make something than watch something.

If you’ve been looking for an excuse to spend a day in Chester, this is probably it.