A small-town Kansas girl aims to marry for money instead of love when she hits the bright lights of New York in the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Millie Dillmount takes delight in the flapper lifestyle of the 1920s, but things start to go awry when she checks into a hotel owned by the leader of a white slavery ring in China.

Members of Jigsaw Stage Productions are bringing the show to the stage for audiences at two venues in south Oxfordshire later this month.

With music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics by Dick Scanlan, the show is based on a 1967 film of the same name and a book by Richard Morris and Scanlan. Former professional singer Helena Kerswell, of Marcham, takes the title role of Millie, whose search for fortune lands her at the Hotel Priscilla for single women, where she makes a friend in Miss Dorothy Brown (Julie Roberts), a new actress from California.

But Millie also encounters the decidedly strange proprietress of the hotel, Mrs Meers, a role taken by well-known Grove performer Pam Hale. She is plunged into a series of adventures, including getting a job, landing in jail and saving her friend Miss Dorothy from the clutches of the sinister Mrs Meers.

Along the way, Millie falls in and out of love with attractive young paperclip salesman Jimmy Smith, played by young Grove performer Josh Kerr, but is he all he seems? You can find out by going to see the show at Shush The Venue, Newbury Street, Wantage, from February 19 to 22, or Cornerstone arts centre, Didcot, from February 27 to 28.

Playing Millie’s fellow Priscilla girls are Jolene Butt as Alice, Lisa Stride-Purves (Gloria), Jo Kerswell (Ruth), Tess Margetts (Cora), Holly Naish (Lucille) and Amanda Taylor (Rita), while Karin Chaplin plays their friend Ethel Peas, who finds herself kidnapped and shipped off to the Orient.

Completing the cast as two Chinese henchmen are Nigel Thornbory and Jenny Williams, as Ching Hoo and Bun Foo, Andy Osborne (insurance company boss Trevor Graydon), Chris Jones (Muzzy van Hossmere, step-mother of Jimmy and Dorothy), Rosemary Stickland (insurance firm worker Miss Peg Flannery), Andrew Barber (Rodney), Jolene Butt (Mathilde), Lisa Stride-Purves (Daphne and Dorothy Parker) and Mike Davies (Policeman, Letch, George Gershwin and Dexter).

The show is directed by Gill Morgan, the musical director is Jevan Johnson-Booth and the choreography has been devised by Karen Brind, who runs a school of dance in Wantage. In Wantage, there are four performances — from the Wednesday to the Friday at 7.30pm and on Saturday at 7pm.

Tickets are available from Shush, Vale and Downland Museum, Church Street, and Bretts Pharmacy, Grove, or by calling 01235 767509. For Didcot audiences, there are two performances on the Thursday and Friday both at 7.45pm, with tickets available from the box office on 01235 515144 or online at: www.JigsawStageProductions.co.uk