IN the mid 1990s, a survey of the most performed plays in the UK named John Godber as the third most popular playwright behind Shakespeare and Alan Ayckbourn. By comparison with the Bard of Avon, who still remains unchallenged at the head of affairs, and Alan Ayckbourn, although not quite as popular as he once…
IF there was such a term as “Grand Ballet”, you could use it to label The Sleeping Beauty. Every thing about it is on a grand scale – Tchaikovsky’s score, the second longest he composed for any genre, Marius Petipa’s original choreography, based in the Brothers Grimm’s interpretation of Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty, even the original…
THE punchline of the old joke about the local yokels’ reply to a passing motorist asking for directions: “I wouldn’t start from here in the first place”, in some ways fits this adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story. The story takes us back and forth from late 19th century Pennsylvanian coal fields and the battle between…
MOST theatre lovers and pantomime fans have heard the name Grimaldi and can possibly conjure up an image of the legendary clown, but know very little about the man or his life. That all changes with Sue Curtis’s new play Slapstick, getting its world premier at this year’s Bath Comedy Festival. The play, written in…
“YESTERDAY upon the stairs I met a man who wasn’t there” – so starts William Hughes Mearns’ poem Antigonish. If you replace “woman” for “man”, you have a description of a very important contributor to this show who sadly from the audience point of view, appears only via video images rather then in person. The…
BRIDPORT hosts the country’s only film festival which celebrates the art of adapting the written word for the silver screen. This year, From Page to Screen runs at the arts centre, with more than 20 films, from 24th to 28th April. The guest curator is Rebecca Lenkiewicz, who wrote the screenplay for She Said and…
THE 2024 Bath Festival, running from Friday 17th to Sunday 26th May, will take audiences on an astonishing and exciting journey through some of today’s most exciting writers, challenging thinkers, hilarious comedians and brilliant musicians, with subjects that range from the climate crisis to silent horror classic Nosferatu, from the Sky at Night presenter Dr…
THE first performance of Shaftesbury Arts Centre’s remarkable production of Amanda Whittington’s The Thrill of Love co-incided with the exact moment of the 69th anniversary of Ruth Ellis’s shooting of her abusive lover David Blakely, which famously led to the last execution of a woman in Britain. The forensic play, with its cast of four…
IF you buy a stick of Blackpool Rock you would find the town’s name running through the heart of the sweet. And in a similar vein, Blood Brothers and the two men most associated with the show, author/composer Willy Russell and director/producer Bill Kenwright, have Liverpool running through their hearts. Born within a year of…
SHERLOCK Holmes arrives at Bath Theatre Royal, from Tuesday 16th to Saturday 20th April, in an adaptation of one of Conan Doyle’s original tales, in a production that marks the 20th anniversary of Blackeyed Theatre Company. Blackeyed Theatre’s production of Sherlock Holmes: The Valley of Fear is in Bath before its London premiere at Southwark…