WHAT better way to celebrate the 250th birthday of Jane Austin, whose novels are the definitive portrait of society in George III’s England, than to mount an adaptation of her 1815 novel Emma in an elegant theatre standing on a site that has housed a theatre since 1805. Adapter Ryan Craig and director Stephen Unwin,…
BOURNEMOUTH Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor Mark Wigglesworth will be conducting 22 performances across the new 2025-26 season, which takes the region’s major orchestra to venues in major towns and smaller centres including Bristol, Exeter, Sherborne and Taunton, as well as its home at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre, where the season opens on Wednesday 1st October….
THE Mitsu Trio come to Dorset and Somerset on Friday 26th and Saturday 27th September for the first dates in the autumn season of Concerts in the West. The series, as always, begins at Bridport Arts Centre, with a coffee-time concert, at 11.30am, followed by Ilminster Arts Centre that evening and The Dance House at…
ILLUSTRATOR Gabrielle Parker’s delightful, surreal and whimsical creations will be celebrated at this year’s Arts by the Sea, the South West’s biggest free celebration of art, culture, people and place, returning to Bournemouth from Friday 26th to Sunday 28th September. Gabrielle Parker, the 2025 Artist in Residence, is an Arts University Bournemouth graduate, who creates…
JANE Austen’s millions of fans tend to have their favourites among her heroines – for many it will be Elizabeth Bennett, for some it will be Anne Elliot, but for a lot of us it is the high-spirited but often wrong-headed Emma Woodhouse. Bath Theatre Royal celebrates the Jane Austen 250th anniversary with a new…
SINCE its first performances in 1957, in French and later in English, Samuel Beckett’s Endgame has been subjected to endless debate, interpretation and controversy, by academics, students, theatre-goers and critics. Regarded by many as the greatest work by the Irish Nobel literature laureate, the play was written while the writer lived in France, where the…
IF you are a fan of the wonderful Natalie Haynes and her standing up for the classic radio shows, the names Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Artemis, Apollo et al are probably familiar. This autumn, the West Country’s favourite comedy theatre company takes up the challenge … but have Living Spit bitten off more than they can…
LOVERS of early and baroque music are in for an absolute treat with the first Salisbury Musick early music festival, from 3rd to 5th October, at some beautiful and unusual venues, ranging from Fovant Chapel to Salisbury’s magnificent St Thomas’s Church. The new festival, which brings together many talented local musicians and some visiting professionals,…
WELSH storyteller Shon-Dale Jones is back on tour with a new show, Stories From An Invisible Town, starting at Weston-super-Mare, with dates in Salisbury, Bristol, Plymouth and Bath. On Tuesday 23rd September Shôn Dale-Jones is first and foremost a storyteller. He’s honest, inventive, and deeply human … curious, restless, wide-eyed, offbeat and resonant. His work…
SOMERSET Art Weeks returns from 13th to 28th September with an enthralling range of art works by painters, printmakers, sculptors, potters, print-makers and multi-disciplinary creators. From the artists studios at Watchet’s East Quay to a music and sound-scape installation in the atmospheric grounds of Shave Farm, Brewham, there is a dazzling display of the talent…