You've got to laugh. Our world may not look a very cheerful place just now but laughter has always been the best medicine.

The Connaught Theatre in Worthing is determined to raise our spirits with its season of comedy, five plays between now and June.

The season starts on Tuesday, February 11, in what many theatre-goers will regard as the best possible way - the new Alan Ayckbourn play.

Snake In The Grass is a piercing and amusing observation by Ayckbourn of familiar lives with dark undercurrents.

Sisters Annabel and Miriam have fond childhood memories of their sun-dappled garden.

But as night falls, it is seemingly much more than the past which comes back to haunt them in this classic teaser starring Rachel Atkins, Susie Blake and Fiona Mollison.

Familiar TV faces take to the Connaught stage for the week starting March 10.

Michael Jayston (EastEnders, Darling Buds of May, Only Fools and Horses), Clare Buckfield (Grange Hill, Two Point Four Children) and Gwen Taylor (Duty Free, Barbara) star in Donald Churchill's comic look at married life, Moment Of Weakness.

Sparks fly when divorced couple Audrey and Tony meet at their country cottage.

It is the arrival at the cottage of their daughter Lucy that puts their lives on a new path.

Three weeks later the theatre is the setting for a highland fling starring Ron Moody and Geoffrey Davies.

In Whisky Galore the locals make the most of an unexpected windfall when a ship with a cargo of 25,000 bottles of whisky founders off an island in the Outer Hebrides.

There are plenty of laughs before the authorities move in during this caper, produced by Charles Vance, from April 4.

John Godber's latest comedy, from May 12, takes us into the achingly embarrassing world of the college reunion.

Beauty has faded, religion has triumphed, the shyest student has gone in for showbiz and the college stud has turned into a computer geek.

Reunion transports us to the fantastic and grotesque.

Final play in the season is Marie Jones' award-winning Stones In His Pockets.

Just two actors, Malcolm Adams and Hugh Lee, bring to life 15 characters in this story of a film company's invasion of a village in rural Ireland.

It needs extras drawn from the community and is at Worthing from June 2 to 7.

Tickets for evening performances of individual plays vary between £11.50 and £20 while matinee prices are £9.50 to £18.

Connaught Playsaver tickets cover evening performances of all five plays at £46, four of them at £45 or three plays at £42.