AN award-winning theatre group s next production will provide an examination of power, love, lust, class and the battle of the sexes.

AN award-winning theatre group's next production will provide an examination of power, love, lust, class and the battle of the sexes.

Miss Julie by August Strindberg is being performed by Clavering Players at the village hall from April 15-17.

The play, which is set on a midsummer's eve in 1874, focuses on the shifting relationship between Miss Julie, the daughter of a nobleman, and Jean, her father's manservant. What starts as a flirtatious contest for power rapidly escalates to something far more serious, with tragic consequences.

The action takes place in the kitchen of Miss Julie's father's manor house in rural Sweden.

A spokesman for Clavering Players said: "This is one of the great European plays and as William Hazlitt said of actors, 'their life is a voluntary dream; a studied madness. They show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be'.

"We hope that our Miss Julie will do all these for you!

"If any readers have a Victorian birdcage and/or Victorian kitchenware that they would be willing to lend the players for the production please contact Gordon Cummings on 01223 892108."

Tickets are �7 and available from Saffron Walden Tourist Information or Rebecca Veitch on 01799 550726.

CLAVERING Players have had an amazing 12 months - last year they celebrated their 50th anniversary and took several awards in the Cambridge Drama Festival, including overall winners.

This year they have been successful in achieving a Biffaward grant for nearly �17,000 for performance lighting.