REGENT Rep, the Christchurch Regent Centre’s renowned ‘house’ company, is returning with Charles Dickens’s great French Revolution romance A Tale of Two Cities.

Set in London and Paris, the epic story of love, revenge, sacrifice and redemption, played out in the shadow of the guillotine against a backdrop of revolutionary terror, is being staged from Wednesday, October 19 to Saturday, October 22.

After 18 years as a prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men – Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer – become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette.

The Regents Rep cast of 20 will take on more than 40 parts between them for the adaptation of one of the best-selling novels of all time.

Director Anne Ponting said she chose the Dickens story because of its exciting, but poignant plot.

She added: “The play read really well, had lots of parts for a large company, and offered exciting theatrical staging opportunities with its fast pace and scene changes.

“Now in rehearsal, the cast are rising magnificently to the challenges it poses, so by October the company should meet the professional standards it has set for itself in the past.”

Tickets for A Tale of Two Cities are £12.50 (concessions £10.50) available from the Regent Centre Box Office on 01202 499199 or the Regent Centre’s website at regentcentre.co.uk.

There are performances on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and one matinee on Saturday. Proceeds go to the Regent Centre development fund.