AN acclaimed adaptation of the best-selling novel The Kite Runner comes to Bath Theatre Royal from Monday 18th to Saturday 23rd March as part of a new nationwide tour. Epic, exhilarating and accompanied by evocative and virtuosic live drumming by tabla player Hanif Khan, this theatrical tour de force is a faithful adaptation of a…
IT has been impossible to ignore the story of the Post Office and the sub-postmasters, with the powerful ITV drama series and constant media reports of the hearings and the latest uncovering of lives ruined in one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in English legal history. But to hear the story first hand is…
A SHAFTESBURY bookshop, which specialises in nature writing, has been named as the best independent book retailer in the South West. FOLDE Dorset has won the British Book Awards Independent Bookshop of the Year competition for the South West, organised by The Bookseller magazine and judged by a prestigious panel of industry specialists, authors, journalists…
A SHOW that was first staged at Plymouth Theatre Royal and Exeter’s Northcott Theatre, comes to Dorchester Arts at the Corn Exchange on Friday 22nd March and Bridport Arts Centre on Friday 23rd, both at 7.30pm. Cracking, A Completely Made-up True Story, is a powerful dark and comic tale from the acclaimed Welsh storyteller-performer Shon…
MUSICIANS and storytellers Bob Whitley (guitar, tenor guitar and mandola) and Lee MacKenzie (baroque cello) take the audience back to the dangerous Tudor court of King Henry VIII with their new show, Anne Boleyn: Wolf at the Door, which has three dates with Artsreach rural touring arts charity at Milborne St Andrew village hall on…
THE Palace Court Theatre in Bournemouth was opened in 1931, and for decades was the centre of theatrical activity in the town before closing in 1970, since when it has been used as a cinema, a church and a temporary home for various one-off activities. In 2020 it was bought by Arts University Bournemouth, and…
THE ever-popular Fascinating Aida – Dillie Keane, Adele Anderson and Liza Pulman – continues the lengthy countrywide 23/24 tour with stops across the south and west. The trio will be at Bournemouth Pavilion on 20th March, The Playhouse at Weston-super-Mare on 21st March and Kings Theatre, Portsmouth, on 23rd March.
LONDON based five peice The Hanging Stars are touring the UK to launch their latest album, On a Golden Shore, and stopping off at Southampton Joiners on 29th March and Bristol Hen and Chicken two days later. With sounds echoing classic Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at their peak, they will make these evenings memorable,…
WHEN Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar hit the stage in the early 1970s, it raised the hackles of many ordinary Churchgoers and those in high positions within the Christian Faith. Tim Rice’s oft quoted remark that they did not see Jesus Christ as God, but simply the right man…
AS part of the Museum of Somerset’s Spotlight Loan programme, from 23rd March to 2nd June 2024, the Tate Gallery is lending The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum (1822) by John Martin. It is a vast and vividly colourful work which caused a public sensation when it was first shown. It also has an important…
THE highlight of this year’s inaugural Bath & West Food and Drink Festival, at the show ground near Shepton Mallet over the weekend 23rd and 24th March, will be the British Cheese Awards. About 600 British cheeses will be judged on Friday 22nd, in the 20th annual edition of the awards, one of the largest…
IF you have seen The Woman in Black before – and after 33 years in the West End and 11 national tours, many thousands of us have – you will know that it is absolutely terrifying. You can keep your Nightmares on Elm Street or Blair Witch Projects – Susan Hill’s chilling novel, adapted brilliantly…
YEOVIL Amateur Operatic Society members take to the stage at Westlands on 19th March in the company’s fourth production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s immortal musical Oklahoma! Set at the time when Oklahoma changed from being part of the Western Territories to become a state, it’s a sort of reverse image of America today. As the…
THE stage of Mere Lecture Hall will be transformed into the bar owned by Rene Artois in Nouvion for the next Mere Amateur Dramatic Society production, ‘Allo, ‘Allo, on from 21st to 23rd March. This rip-roaring comedy has all those famous characters you remember, know and love from the television programme of the same name,…
DAVID Nicholls’ 2003 novel Starter for Ten (and the film that followed it three years later) was based at Bristol University, so what better location for the musical version than the city’s famous Old Vic theatre. For those who missed the book and the movie, it’s about working class Brian, brought up in Southend-on-Sea, whose…
IN the days when youngsters could ride their bicycles around in comparative safety because there were so few cars on the road, many a show off-took their hands off the handlebars with the cry “Look at me. No hands”. When Liam Mower’s Edward Scissorhands, deprived of the use of his hands because they had been…
MILBORNE Port Opera has chosen a show that won five Tonys and seven Drama Desk Awards on Broadway, but is rarely performed in this country. So audiences are in for a treat when the company stages the Canadian musical, The Drowsy Chaperone, at Milborne Port village hall from 3rd to 6th April. Lisa Lambert and…
IT will come as no surprise to anyone who understands Moviola’s rural audiences that Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson’s acclaimed film, The Great Escaper, is the most popular choice for March. Not to be confused with the exciting Steve McQueen wartime POW drama (who could forget the daring motorbike leap over the fence), this is…
CORNWALL’s much-loved Miracle Theatre is back on the road this spring, with a new show, Hell’s Bells – A Hallucinogenic Whodunnit, touring to six venues in Dorset and Devon, continuing at Exeter Northcott Theatre on Thursday and Friday 21st and 22nd March and ending the run at Dorchester Corn Exchange on Wednesday 27th. Miracle is…
IF you have been watching over the past few years the slow process of restoring and converting Sherborne House, the listed Georgian building in Newland, Sherborne, you can see the results from 1st March with the first exhibition, Land Work, new and recent paintings by the Dorset artist Paul Jones, open for booked visits until…
THE Mowlem Theatre at Swanage, close to some of Purbeck’s ancient quarries, was the setting for a film and recording of a new song, Drop The Hammer, described as a “captivating ode to quarrying in Dorset,” written and performed by the West Country folk and shanty band, The Longest Johns. The song was commissioned by…
A NEW arts festival for Bath from 7th to 28th March kicks off the region’s arts festival calendar. Curious Minds will champion the importance of curiosity for all, with more than 30 book talks, live performances, film screenings, writing workshops and walking tours. Described as “a festival to ignite ideas,” Curious Minds, curated by Bath…
ON 15th On February 1987, Graham Greene, one of the most acclaimed English novelists of the 20th century, attended a star-studded peace conference in Moscow (glasnost, remember?). This event, and a historic meeting between the novelist and a famous spy is the subject of a new play, A Splinter of Ice, being staged by Yeovil’s…
DURING the 1960s and 70s, if you were a music fan living in Bournemouth or Poole, or could get there easily, there was one shop that you would always make for, Jon’s Bus Stop Records, next to the Grand Cinema in Westbourne. Here you could not only find the latest chart hit you were looking…
CAMPAIGNING theatre company Townsend Productions brings a new show with music, Behold Ye Ramblers, to Shillingstone’s Portman Hall on Saturday 23rd and Burton Bradstock village hall on Sunday 24th, both starting at 7.30pm. Behold Ye Ramblers is a new play by Neil Gore, produced in association with The Society for the Study of Labour History….
BROADSIDE ballads, the wild and gruesome “tabloids” of the 17th, 18th and 19th century, are brought to noisy and colourful life in Broadside Bangers, a new show from Cornwall’s post-ragtime punk-klezmer-swing band, Julian Gaskell and His Ragged Trousered Philanthropists coming to Dorset for three dates with Artsreach from 22nd to 24th March. Described as a…
IF you are a fan of Paula Hawkins’ book The Girl on The Train, or perhaps of the film version that moved the action from London to New York, wipe your memory clean before you head to Strode Theatre in Street for the next Street Theatre production, on stage from 20th to 23rd March. Director…
THE south west’s farmers, producers and food purveyors will be celebrated at a major new event in the regional food calendar, the Bath & West Food and Drink Festival at the Royal Bath and West Showground near Shepton Mallet on 23rd and 24th March. On Friday 22nd, the site will also host the British Cheese…
MULTI-talented John Monie, the writer and star of Bath’s annual pantomime and a frequent performer in improv shows, tackles one of the greatest figures of pantomime and comedy history, Joseph Grimaldi, in a new play which has its world premiere at the Bath Comedy Festival from 14th to 20th April. SLAPSTICK! hauls its audiences into…
FOR the first time in nearly 40 years, Salisbury Cathedral is without scaffolding, and to mark the occasion the New Art Centre at Roche Court, Winterslow, near Salisbury, has shared an image of an installation in the Cathedral Close. The scaffolding has been part of the cathedral’s exterior structure for 38 years, and in celebration…
RUST can be strangely beautiful with its accretions of colour and texture. The use of rust in art – printing and dyeing – will be featured in at exhibition and workshop at The Fine Foundation Gallery at Durlston Country Park, Swanage, from 6th to 19th March. Sea Change is a showcase of Dorset Carrie Mason,…
AN important new display at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery reveals the little-known story of John Brown, who escaped slavery in the USA and lived in Dorchester during the 1860s. On show until 30th May, the exhibition has been curated by Jordan Cole, a student at Bath Spa University, and uses research from a number…
A MINIATURE model of a cape once worn by the Queen singer Freddie Mercury is one of the star attractions at an important exhibition of fashion and costume at the Salisbury Museum, on until 12th May. Fashioning Our World exhibition will feature fashion items from the past which tell powerful stories of sustainability and includes…
THE Dorset Museum at Dorchester is presenting a major exhibition of sculptor Dame Elisabeth Frink’s life and work, on until 21st April 2024. The works are drawn from the collection that Dorset Museum acquired from the Elisabeth Frink Estate in 2020, featuring sculptures, prints, drawings, and personal possessions. Many of these items, including working plasters…