BEYOND Horizons, at Stoberry Park Gardens, overlooking Wells Cathedral, coinciding with this year’s Somerset Art Weeks and running from 5th September to 4th October, is the first of what is planned to be an annual open air sculpture exhibition, a month-long event bringing together more than 70 sculptors from across Somerset, UK and beyond. Described…
THE country’s favourite poet, Pam Ayres, comes to Dorchester Arts at the Thomas Hardye School theatre on Sunday 20th September at 5pm, Tiverton Community Arts Theatre at 7.30 on Friday 25th, Taunton Brewhouse on Sunday 27th at 3.30pm, and Weston super Mare Playhouse on Sunday 21st November, with her latest collection, Doggedly Onwards – a…
THE Dorset Monochrome Collective has its second exhibition in the community room at Dorchester’s Borough Gardens, from 14th to 20th September. Founded in 2018 by Alison Webber, the collective consists of a group of friends who share a passion for monochrome photography, whether that is digital or film. Members include the distinguished portrait and landscape…
THAT is not just an alliterative play on words – it is the underlying theme of a fascinating solo play by Anglo-German theatre company, Fish in a Dress, which has four Dorset dates on its autumn national tour, starting at the Bay Theatre at Weymouth on Tuesday 15th September. The City for Incurable Women will…
THE Marine Theatre at Lyme Regis moves from its successful summer rep season to a month packed with music, continuing on Saturday 5th September with the Sambroso All Stars performing the Buena Vista Social Club, celebrating the sounds of Cuba’s golden age. On Friday 11th, the Marine hosts Mark Chadwick, in a special solo gig…
ROMESH Ranganathan, star of countless television comedy series and and presenter of The Weakest Link, is back on the road from November with a new show, and a massive list of dates and venues, including Yeovil’s Westlands. In this new stand-up show Romesh Ranganathan promises to “Change Your Life.” He is here to help, he…
STEEL Magnolias is how Americans describe strong, gritty and indefatigable Southern women, and playwright Robert Harling knew all about them. He was born and brought up in Dothan, Alabama, and studied law in Natchitoches, Louisiana, the town in which he based his most famous play and where he still lives. His inspiration came from his…
ANTHONY Jay and Jonathan Lynn are immortalised in the television Hall of Fame as creators of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, which together ran for 37 episodes between 1980 and 1988. Jonathan Lynn took up the parliamentary quill again in 2023 for a “last hurrah” originally entitled I’m Sorry, Prime Minister, I Can’t Quite Remember,” and…
THE history of theatre, film and TV is strewn with adaptations of famous works that have proved disastrous rather than successful. When in 2000 director/choreographer Matthew Bourne decided to marry the music of one of the world’s most popular operas, Bizet’s Carmen, with James M Cain’s novel and 1945 film noir The Postman Only Rings…
TAMSIN Waley-Cohen, one of the country’s finest violinists joins the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra for two concerts, at Weymouth Pavilion on Thursday 10th September and Queen’s Theatre, Barnstaple, on Monday 14th. The soloist, who is artistic director of Devo Two Moors Festival (1st to 11th October), will be playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Massenet’s beautiful Meditation…
PERFORMANCE poet Luke Wright has taken his own story of adoption and turned it into a show that is part stand-up and part poetry. Later Life Letter, an evening of warm and honest thoughts, with poems, jokes and some music, returns to the south west on 10th September at Bridport Arts Centre, 11th at Weston-super-Mare…
IF you are old enough to remember the tragic death of Grace Archer in a fire in the stables at Brookfield (in 1955), you have been a fan of the world’s longest running soap for most of its existence. This year marks the 75th anniversary of The Archers, and there are two ways you can…
A LIGHTHOUSE is a symbol of hope and safety, light in sometimes frightening darkness, a welcome hint of hope if the ship is foundering or there is a man overboard. In her debut play, The Light House, coming to Somerset’s Take Art rural touring charity in September, writer-performer Alys Williams explores a real life story…
EVERY year more people look out for those little black stickers with one, two or three gold stars – Great Taste Awards from the Dorset-based Guild of Fine Food. This year’s West Country results include 27 products gaining the top three-star status, and a finalist from the region for the overall national Golden Fork awards….
PURBECK, with its dramatic coastline, is inextricably linked to the sea, and this is the theme of this year’s Purbeck International Chamber Music Festival, from 3rd to 6th September. Artistic director, and internationally acclaimed cellist, Natalie Clein has chosen this theme because the sea connects and separates, carries memory and myth, and reflects the depths…
THE Billings, a dedicated community venue at the heart of the Theatre Royal Bath, will open in spring 2027. This will be the fourth and final public and performance space within the theatre’s historic city centre site. The project, funded with support from more than 4,200 donors, has been fully approved, and work is now…
SOME years ago, the campaigning environmental charity Common Ground published a booklet exploring the idea of souvenirs and the difference between trinkets and geegaws – nylon tartan, plastic scallop shells – mass-produced on the other side of the world, and locally produced crafts that carried a connection to their place. If you are in Devon…
PICTURESQUE Sidmouth is not only a delightful seaside resort and home to the country’s oldest folk festival, but also has the longest-running traditional summer rep season, at the Manor Pavilion theatre, this year continuing until 19th September. The programming at Sidmouth has moved on from the typical farce and mystery fare to include more challenging…
LANDSCAPE and river painter Nick Andrew is working on four panoramic seasonal drawings, a commission for Dorset County Hospital, Dorchester, to be installed in the new critical care unit, which is due to be opened next year. On Friday 4th September, Nick, whose studio is at Bull Mill, Crockerton, near Warminster, will be showing work…
POOLE’s only independent cinema at the Lighthouse arts centre, which has doubled its audience in the last two years, has entered this year’s second British Independent Film Awards’ (BIFA) Cinema of the Year award. “Lighthouse is proud to be Poole’s only independent cinema, audiences have been visiting it in record numbers, and we’d love them…
BATH Children’s Literature Festival returns from Friday 25th September until Sunday 4th October, with a packed programme that ranges from a free Party at the Holburne Museum to a chance to discover the latest How to Train your Dragon adventure. Among the leading children’s writers (and illustrators) taking part will be Katherine Rundell, Michael Rosen…
DORSET Museum & Art Gallery is launching a fundraising campaign to enhance and expand its forthcoming Mary Anning – Fossil Hunter exhibition, which will run from 30th January to 2nd May 2027, celebrating the life and legacy of the pioneering palaeontologist 180 years after her death. This landmark exhibition, which will have a programme of…
THE problem with reviewing a wholly-new interpretation of a very familiar play is comparison – what would a new audience make of a play you know, and they don’t? So it is with the extraordinarily versatile and inventive Tracy-Ann Oberman’s version of Noel Coward’s 1939 play Present Laughter, opening at Bath before an eight-venue UK tour….
COMPOSER Helen Porter comes to Shaftesbury’s St Peter’s Church on Saturday 19th September with her Calstock Big Jazz Choir for a performance of her major new work Small Wonders, a musical celebration of the consolation of nature. Composed for choir, soloists and instrumentalists, Small Wonders had its premiere on the last night of this year’s…
THE 2026-27 season for Amateur Players of Sherborne starts on 7th September with a production of The Good Doctor, a play based on short stories by Anton Chekhov. Directed by Richard Culham, the sold-out production is described as “an evening of laughter, longing and wonderfully human absurdity.” Neil Simon reimagines the Chekhov’s stories with wit,…
NEWS that a sequel was planned for The Devil Wears Prada, the brilliant film that shed a glittering and unflinching eye on the fashion business, was a surprise for many people. Would stars Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway and Stanley Tucci want to reprise their roles … how could the story be bettered? Reportedly Streep and…
A collective of artists who originally got together in 2021 with a touring exhibition across the south west are reconvening in August with an exhibition reviewing their five year journey and beginning another in Bath and Bruton, on until 27th September. Travelling to eight locations over the summer of 2021, Inch by IN:CH took work…
THERE’s precious little “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” as Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre heads into autumn. Rather, the arts centre is ripping it up with a short season of cult films that explored and celebrated different aspects of youth rebellion. Since the 1950s, youth culture in this country has a wide and varied history,…