NORTH Country Theatre, based in Richmond, known chiefly for rip-roaring comedies, is celebrating 20 years of producing plays with a packed year of performances near and far.

Egil Skallagrimsson Keeps His Head, a tongue-in-cheek take on the 10th century Icelandic Egil Saga, tours from March, then in the summer, the company presents its first open air Shakespeare, Twelfth Night.

A new adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s spooky short story, The Wish House, tours to village halls and arts centres from the Scottish Borders to South Shropshire in the autumn.

The company started with a ground breaking adaptation of John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps which opened at the Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond, in 1996.

The play ran in the West End for nearly ten years and has been seen by thousands of people worldwide.

Nobby Dimon, North Country Theatre's director, has created more than 30 touring productions, three large-scale community plays, numerous educational projects for primary schools and site specific interpretative dramas for venues as varied as Brodsworth Hall, Fountains Abbey and Kiplin Hall.

Twelfth Night will have a cast of ten actors all of whom have appeared with the company sometime in the last two decades.

“This is a first for North Country, not only because it will be the largest professional cast the company has employed, but also because it will be the first Shakespeare I have ever directed – or indeed performed in,” he said.

There will be eight outdoor performances at venues including Aske Hall (June 23 & 24), Bolton Castle (June 29 & 30) and Kiplin Hall (July 1 & 2).

Mr Dimon said it was fitting the company would perform at Aske as that is where former D&S reporter and first chairman of the board, Debbie Walker, was working at the time of her death 1997.

"She had plans for us to do outdoor theatre at Aske back then,” he recalled.

The company is mentoring first-time director Vivienne Garnett, who has performed with North Country many times since her professional debut in The Imitation Game in 2005 most recently in The Gift of Stones 2015.

She will direct the autumn tour of Kipling’s The Wish House which will be adapted for the stage by Nobby Dimon.

For dates and events, visit northcountrytheatre.com or catch up with the company’s new punk version of Scandi-noir type drama based on the Egil Saga at Bellerby Village Hall on March 12; Hunton Village Hall, March 14; Masham Town Hall, March 15; Reeth Memorial Hall, March 18; North Stainley, March 19; Husthwaite, March 22; and Kirklington, March 23.

Egil Skallagrimsson Keeps his Head was originally commissioned for the Jorvik Viking Festival in 2010.