Arundel Festival

Drip Action theatre company are once again at the heart of this year’s Arundel Festival – as they start thinking about their 40th anniversary next year.

Under artistic director Bill Brennan, the company are offering for 2026, as ever, both their traditional theatre trail and their evening production.

The Theatre Trail 2026 comprises six short plays each day in six different venues around Arundel, running from Saturday to Saturday, August 22-29, tickets £8.

The theatre trail schedule is:

11am – Arundel Town Hall, Maltravers Street. Writing in Sand by Simon Brett. The good old days are the product of a selective memory.

12 noon – Priory Playhouse, London Road. Poor Visibility by Stuart Smithers. A bag lady tells her defiant story. In association with the Arundel Players.

1pm – Arundel Football Club, Mill Road. Thank You for Having Us by Geoff Saunders. Two sisters tell you their versions of a shared history.

2pm – Victoria Institute, Tarrant Street. Well Done, Good Job, Sod Off by Isaac Sturge. Susan’s retiring. Cheese balls, balloons and chaos… what could go wrong?

Interval

4pm – Cathedral Centre, London Road. The King and Me by Brian Walsh. The year 1645. A shoe in both camps for the man in the hedge.

5pm – Fauna Brewery, London Road. Lesson Learnt by Isaac Sturge. Navigating the modern world, what better teacher than your ex-student?

Bill said: “The theatre trail is a bit different this year. They are mostly local writers. We have got two that have submitted plays before. We are always looking for anything that fits sufficiently well and easily into the different venues that we have that don't have so much of the technical stuff like clever lighting. They need to have fairly simple staging and casts that are not too big but actually one of them has got five people in the cast. We've got physical comedy and we've got about three soliloquies which are going to be more thoughtful probably and we have also got drama. It is the usual mix of comedy and drama and, as I say, often in the same play.

“And we are pleased to have a new venue this year with the Fauna Brewery. They have got a nice big space, and the play that has been written for it is about a couple of people in a bar so it is good to use the site.”

Rounding off the day is the evening production, Brainsluts by Dan Bishop, Monday to Saturday, August 24-29 at 7.30pm at The Victoria Institute, Tarrant Street, Arundel. Tickets: £15/£10 students.

Brainsluts comes following its acclaimed run at the Edinburgh Festival – a sharp, funny and highly original new comedy set in the strange world of a clinical drug trial.

Five strangers sign up to test a mystery drug. Over the course of five Sundays, they wait, watch, worry and talk, scrutinising every possible side effect while gradually revealing the anxieties, ambitions and oddities that brought them there in the first place.

Brainsluts comes promised as a “witty and unsettling look at modern work, loneliness, money, identity and the awkward ways people try to connect.”

Bill said: “It was at the Edinburgh Festival and it is about a group of mainly young people who get involved as guinea pigs in these drug trials. It's about their lives and their interactions but it's also about taking these drugs and wondering what the side effects will be.

“I just came across it. I'm always looking for four-star or five-star things or things that would suit our venue. I got it and I read it and it was funny and I think the fact that it was at Edinburgh and that it was a hit there shows that it was the kind of thing that we are looking for.”