THE run-up to Christmas can be frantic, with food to organise, presents to wrap and secrets to keep, but take a few minutes out, put your feet up and give yourself a pre-festivities treat by browsing The Courtyard's new season programme.

The highlight of the next six months will undoubtedly be the arrival of the critically acclaimed production of Sebastian Faulks’s novel Birdsong, which comes to Hereford for a week-long run in June next year. A mesmerising story of love and courage, before and during the First World War, Birdsong has been a sell-out triumph wherever it's played, seen by more than 130,000 people and garnering four and five-star reviews. In pre-war France, a young Englishman, Stephen Wraysford, embarks on a passionate and dangerous affair with the beautiful Isabelle Azaire that turns their worlds upside down. As the war breaks out, Stephen must lead his men through the carnage of the Battle of the Somme and through the sprawling tunnels that lie deep underground. Faced with the unprecedented horror of the war, Stephen clings to the memory of Isabelle and the idyll of his former life as his world explodes around him.

It's a season rich in drama, with Middle Ground Theatre Company presenting Classic Ghosts, a double bill of classic tales by Charles Dickens and M.R.James, the ghostmeister, starring Jack Shepherd, The Elephant Man, the true story of the fabled Joseph Merrick; LA actor Miles Allen brings his OneMan Breaking Bad - 60 episodes in 60 minutes!, a hit at Edinburgh and with more than a million YouTube views, and the return of The Reduced Shakespeare Company with the Complete History of Comedy - from Aristophanes to Chaplin and beyond. There are two productions from The Courtyard's own Youth Theatre, with triple bill of devised pieces based on Grimms Fairy Tales from the Intermediate Youth Theatre, while the Youth Theatre present and adaptation of James and the Giant Peach.

The new year also sees the premiere of Dreaming in Code, the latest production from Herefordshire-based 2Faced Dance Company, featuring a breathtaking collision of kinetically charged dance and theatre. And in the third week of January the ever-popular Circus of Horrors is back - from sword-swallowers to dare-devil balancing acts, from hair hangers to a pickled person, this is circus with a real twist and forked tongue firmly in cheek.

Pick up a copy of the new Live brochure at the box office, or visit courtyard.org.uk for details of all forthcoming events.