HORSLEY director David Manzi-Fe's Laughing Orange theatre company return to the fray with a new production of one of Gloucestershire-born screenwriter and playwright Dennis Potter's finest plays, Blue Remembered Hills, this month.

Blue Remembered Hills opens at the Everyman in Cheltenham on October 6, in a show that has been sold out for several weeks, before heading off round Gloucestershire and the East Midlands on tour.

Blue Remembered Hills is Dennis Potter's acclaimed story of a group of seven-year-old children living in the Forest of Dean in 1943. The landscape of woods and hills becomes their playground, far from the troubles of war.

Here they explore their friendships and loyalties with all the excitement, joy, cruelty and horror which children are capable of. But the peacefulness and innocence of their world is lost with a single tragic event.

The characters are young children, but it is adults who fill the roles; a sharp comment on the nature of nostalgia and adult understanding of childhood by Dennis Potter.

The play is one of Potter's best known works; although originally written for television, winning the 1980 BAFTA TV Award for best single play, it is an utterly compelling stage show.

The production will be stopping near Stroud on three occassions. On October 13 it comes to Kingshill House in Dursley and on October 14 it comes to Slimbridge village hall.

"We also decided to do a performance at The Space in Stroud on October 26 as soon as we heard that the Cheltenham performances had sold out," said David Manzi-Fe.

*The show will take place at 8pm and tickets, at £7.50, are available from the Stroud tourist information office.