WITH temperatures as low as they are at the moment it may be hard to believe that spring and summer are on the way, but a look at the Minack Theatre's programme for the coming season is a happy reminder that warmer and drier days and nights are not that far off.

Indeed, it opens at Easter, only two months away, with Titanic – The Musical!

Being staged by the Atlantic Theatre Company this marks the centenary of the loss of the so-called "unsinkable ship", with the last of its eight performances being performed at 10.20pm on April 12, exactly 100 years since the tragedy when the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank with such an appalling loss of life.

A month later, on a happier note, another historic event is being marked with Olympus – The Musical.

Timed to coincide with the start of the Olympic torch relay from Land's End, staged by Good Company and written to celebrate the London Olympics, with "a mixture of haunting ballads, comedy capers and stirring anthems, its story travels from the 2012 opening ceremony to Mount Olympus in ancient Greece.

Worth checking the theatre's website www.minack.com for details of all the springtime choir, opera, jazz and drama events happening there, among them the Fisherman's Friends and Suzanne Vega, not forgetting the Tuesday and Thursday morning family shows held during the school holidays.

The theatre's metaphorical curtain goes up on its summer season, beginning May 28, with a production by BishBashBosh Productions and Cornish playwright Alan M Kent's acclaimed The Tin Violin.

While much of this concerns music and song there are no less than three fully-fledged musicals, The Sound of Music, presented by St Ives-based Kidz R Us,The Book of Mirrors – A Steam Punk Musical by the Hertfordshire Players and the Mitre Players' Return To The Forbidden Planet, plus Surrey Opera's Die Fledermaus and Cambridge University Gilbert & Sullivan Society's Ruddigore.

Illyria presents the first of the two productions staged for schools and adults, an adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Twits and the Central School of Speech and Drama follows this with Peter Pan.

There are three "straight" Shakespearean productions, Twelfth Night by Moving Stories Theatre, As You Like It by the Winchester College Players, and Cube Theatre's Macbeth. Then, too, there is The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare (Abridged) by the Questors Theatre.

Cornwall's own Miracle Theatre is there in mid-summer with its special treatment of Oscar Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnest. Other dramatic delights include The Hypochrondriac by the Newport Players, Janus Theatre Company's Cat Among The Pigeons, Tower Theatre Company's David Copperfield and The 39 Steps by the Romsey Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society.

The Minack's metaphorical curtain comes down on its 2012 season with three performances of the traditional Proms At The Minack by the Mount Charles Brass Band and Friends.

Booking office (for shows from May 23), opens April 2. Tel: 01736 810181.