REPORT after report is published detailing “systemic” or “structural” racism in some of our major institutions. Fears of anyone “whose skin is a different shade” (as Hammerstein put it in South Pacific) fill some sections of our media, and fear of ultra right-wing action against them inform others. Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird…
SCOTT of the Antarctic was a Great British Hero for generations throughout the 20th century. Indeed he was the paradigm of the English hero – courageous, honourable, thoroughly decent … and he failed bravely. And Captain Oates, one of Scott’s five-man team on that doomed journey to the South Pole, acquired legendary status with his…
WHETHER you are a fan of pantomimes, Christmas shows or determinedly non-Christmas shows in December, there will be something on stage for you in the south and west this season. In all my years reviewing, I have never seen so many offerings, from the big starry shows in the cities to the unpaid performers in…
MASTER storyteller Vic Llewellyn comes to Stockland village hall, near Honiton, on Sunday 23rd November, with a wintery story to make your blood run cold, No One is Listening’(A Ghost Story), a funny and heartbreaking ride through a landscape of ghosts, forgetfulness and fading memories. How do we preserve what is beginning to fade? When…
TOM Moth, the acclaimed harpist with multi-platinum-selling bandFlorence and The Machine, and a Frome resident, is one of three locally-based acts performing at The Tunnels on Saturday 29th November t launch the fund-raising campaign, 25 for 25, to support Frome Festival I harpist among musicians taking part in Frome Festival’s ‘25 for 25’ launch to…
CONSONE Quartet, the first period instrument string quartet to be selected as BBC New Generation Artists, is coming to Bridport Arts Centre, Ilminster Arts Centre and Crewkerne Dance House on 28th and 29th November, for the final Concerts in the West tour of 2025. The four musicians – Agata Daraškaite and Magdalena Loth-Hill, violins, Elitsa…
YES, you read that right – “ice (not nice) music”. Pioneering Norwegian musician Terje Isungset is bringing his mesmerising ice quartet to Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre on Wednesday 19th November, with two more dates in our region, 21st November at St George’s, Bristol, and 22nd at the Turner Sims hall at Southampton University. Also known…
MERE Amateur Dramatic Society will be taking audiences out of the seasonal baking and present-packing frenzy to the far-from-festive setting of Occupied France for the winter production – ‘Allo ‘Allo 2, “The Camembert Caper” at the Lecture Hall from 19th to 22nd November. Based on the hit TV series, this sequel to the popular stage production…
GEOFF Norcott is that very rare thing in the UK comedy scene – he is a Conservative! But coming out as a right-winger hasn’t impeded his career too badly, and he is now on a new tour, Basic Bloke 2 – “There’s no Bloke without Fire” – coming to the Electric Palace at Bridport on…
THE new exhibition at the top floor gallery at Poole’s Lighthouse art centre is an inversion of the usual form of words describing artworks. The Art of Poetry, running to 22nd November, is art created in response to the written word. Technically described as the reverse of the literary device of ekphrasis, in which language…
NOTHING explores the depths of emotion and drama like a great movie melodrama, and a new season of films at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre, starting on 4th November, sets out to celebrate the genre with a programme that ranges from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? to Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet. The BFI Film Audience…
SOMERSET artists James and Kate Lynch, who live on a hill overlooking the Somerset Levels, have both had work selected for The Life of the Fields, a major exhibition at St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery in Lymington, one of the most adventurous and prestigious galleries in the area. The exhibition runs to 10th January…
THERE is apparently a powerful connection between medicine and comedy – look at the number of doctors and other medics who have combined stand-up with their work, or moved over entirely from the operating theatre to the performing theatre. Take Georgie Carroll, a nurse who has been playing to sell-out audiences for some years. Her…
WELSH storyteller Shon-Dale Jones is back on tour with a new show, Stories From An Invisible Town, with final dates in the area at Bath Theatre Royal’s Ustinov Studio on 17th and 18th November. Shôn is first and foremost a storyteller. He’s honest, inventive, and deeply human … curious, restless, wide-eyed, offbeat and resonant. His…
AN exhibition, at Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury, from 27th September to 10th January 2026, A Life Outside: Hope Bourne on Exmoor, offers a new appraisal of the work and life of the Exmoor writer and artist. Created in partnership with The Exmoor Society, which cares for The Hope L Bourne Collection, the exhibition considers…
IF you are a regular viewer of the Repair Shop on TV you will be used to people who have brought in distressed heirlooms that remind them of the lost loved ones who actually made them, saying of their loved ones when they return to admire the expertly re-invented prized possession “I can see them…
BRYANSTON School staged a week-long art and design showcase, Re-Imagine 2025, at the Royal Watercolour Society Gallery in London, featuring work from across the school’s past and present, with Old Bryanstonians (OBs), current pupils and staff, highlighting imagination in all its forms. Visitors moved through a space of paintings, drawings, sculpture, prints and design, while…
BISCUITS are a familiar feature of most European culinary traditions and they have a special place in the heart of Croatian actress Tina Hofman, who brings her one-woman show, Pepper and Honey, to Sixpenny Handley village hall on Saturday 29th November at 7.30pm and Litton Cheney Community Hall on Sunday 30th November at 2.30pm. Tea…
ALASTAIR Braidwood is a man of many talents. Well-known to fans of the New Hardy Players and Dorset folk music as a versatile musician, musical director and actor, he is also an experienced handknitter and he has just celebrated the launch of his new knitwear brand by knitting an entire fisherman’s gansey from start to…
PATRICK Ness’s play A Monster Calls, developed from an original idea by the late Siobhan Dowd, comes to the Merlin Theatre in Frome from 20th to 22nd November, performed by members of Frome Drama and directed by Calum Grant. Set in the present day, the story centres on 13-year-old Conor, whose mother is dying from…
STUNNING is the only word to describe Martyn Jessop’s performance as The Creature in the Street Theatre production of Nick Dear’s riveting adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Director Adam Lanfranchi chose this play, first seen in 2011 at the National Theatre, with no thought of caution. His programme notes underline that its exploration of the…
SHAFTESBURY Arts Centre hosts an exhibition, Droves and Downs, until 18th November, featuring work by four artists who were awarded bursaries by Dorset Visual Arts to create a body of work inspired by the Cranborne Chase National Landscape. Via an open call, artists were invited by DVA to submit proposals to explore the different facets…
UNTIL a few months ago, the names of Moth and Raynor Winn provoked respect and admiration, and the their story was filmed as The Salt Path, with a stellar cast featuring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. That critically-praised film is the most-requested on Moviola’s November programme. In July, The Observer newspaper broke the story which…