Charles Hutchinson looks ahead to the spring offerings from York Theatre Royal

YORK Theatre Royal's main-house spring season will mark the beginning of two new creative partnerships. A joint production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men will be mounted with the Bolton Octagon Theatre, and English Touring Theatre will make its first Yorkshire visit to stage Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts.

Rehearsals for Of Mice And Men - Steinbeck's story of two migrant workers chasing the American dream in smalltown USA - will start on January 7 in Bolton under Mark Babych, the Octagon artistic director. His cast of ten will be led by Michael Glenn Murphy, seen this year at the Theatre Royal in Kafka's Dick and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the company includes John Kirk and Lucy Chalkley, who performed the trio of two handers - Happy Jack, Live Bed Show and Disco Pigs - that made up the inaugural autumn season in the new Theatre Royal Studio. This time Lucy will be playing the only female role, Curley's wife.

The production will open in Bolton, then transfer to York from February 26 to March 16, and Steinbeck's themes will be as topical as ever, says Theatre Royal artistic director Damian Cruden: "It's about the itinerant in us, always being on the move yet always searching for a place to be at peace in - and it's not necessarily looking for perfection but for a place where you can be who you are."

The main auditorium season will open with York Light Opera Society's production of Leslie Bricusse's Scrooge, The Musical, from February 12 to 23, and also features two week-long touring shows: English Touring Theatre in a new translation of Ibsen's Ghosts by Stephen Mulrine, directed by Stephen Unwin, with Brideshead Revisited star Diana Quick leading the cast from March 19 to 23, and David Graham Theatre Productions' Hold Tight It's 60s Night, one of those nostalgic revues, from March 25 to 30.

"English Touring Theatre are a great company and will bring something new to the Theatre Royal. It is difficult to do a three-week repertory run of Chekhov or Ibsen but to open up the theatre to some of the darker works for a week makes great sense," Damian says. "I'm keen to see this role grow over the next two or three years, working towards touring shows opening at this theatre. It offers a new way forward, an opportunity for touring companies and repertory theatres to interact for mutual benefit."

Hold Tight, It's 60s Night is the kind of musical revue show more associated with the Grand Opera House but Damian says: "It's lots of fun, colourful, and a nostalgic night out, and it gives us the chance to be all things to all people as chief executive Ludo Keston and I are trying to find ways of encouraging people to come to the theatre more often. This is the people's theatre and it must be for all manner of people who want to join in."

For tickets, ring 01904 623568.