A new comedy venture, Live at the Vaudeville, opens 9 December at the Vaudeville Theatre in London's West End. Brainchild of producer Edward Snape, the initiative aims to bring together the very best of popular comic theatre and new variety performers into one branded venue.

Live at the Vaudeville will operate for up to nine months each year and will be programmed with a mostly younger adult audience in mind, reflecting recent successful West End attempts to cater to this market- such as Ben Elton's Hollywood satire Popcorn and Mark Ravenhill's debut play Shopping and Fucking, about S&M and the London underworld.

To make the shows more accessible, Snape has introduced a low-cost pricing structure which includes top price seats at £12.99 (£14.99 on weekends). Snape comments,"In the same way that the international stars of the 50s and 60s queued to appear at the London Palladium, Live at the Vaudeville will provide an intimate theatre space for today's comedians and new variety performers."

The first show of the new venture, camp comedian Julian Clary's Special Delivery, opens Tuesday, 9 December. Cult physical comedy company, The Right Size, has also been lined up to stage their latest show Do You Come Here Often? which attracted sell-out audiences at the Edinburgh Festival in August and during an earlier run in London fringe venue the Lyric Hammersmith. Double act Hamish McColl and Sean Foley will return to their roles as two friends stuck in a bathroom for 25 years. The production will run for six weeks from 8 January.

--By Terri Paddock
What's Onstage, London
(www.whatson.com)