EXPLOSIVE humour is heading for the North-East this winter when the Royal Shakespeare Company's annual tour links three of the best of the Bard's comedies with five dramas celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot.

Tickets for the RSC season, from November 14 to December 3, go on sale from June 1.

The event is being dedicated to Newcastle Theatre Royal chief executive Peter Sarah, who died last month.

Associate director Dominic Cooke also had the sad duty of announcing that popular actor Nicky Henson is too ill in his battle against cancer to undertake the North-East visit, and his part of Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night is being taken by Clive Wood.

A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Comedy Of Errors are the other two Theatre Royal productions. The People's Theatre, at Heaton, is staging the Gunpowder plays, which open with Shakespeare's banned play Thomas More and conclude with a work commissioned from playwright Frank McGuinness called Speaking Like Magpies.

There are strong Northern links with the main Gunpowder Plot members Guy Fawkes, who was born in York, and Thomas Percy, who had links to Northumberland.

Mr Cooke said: "There were so many people involved in the plot that I am sure it has a fairly wide geographical spread."

To book tickets, call 0870 905 5060. For information about the season, go to www.theatre royal.co.uk/rsc or www.rsc. org.uk