IN recent years, Mary Anning, the remarkable fossil hunter of Lyme Regis, has been celebrated in print, on stage and on screen – even as a prototype lesbian. But the character remains both enduringly fascinating and slightly elusive. Now a new one-woman play, coming to Dorchester Arts at the Corn Exchange on Thursday 14th May…
THE ever-adventurous Barn Theatre at Cirencester is staging a revival of Double Double, a clever story of power, love and illusion. First produced in 1986 at London’s Fortune Theatre, the play is at the Barn until 30th May. Weeks before his 37th birthday, Philippa’s husband Richard dies. But the terms of his inheritance required that…
EMMA Rice, acclaimed former artistic director of Kneehigh Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe, brings her Frome-based Emma Rice Company in her own adaptation and production of Malory Towers, to Bath Theatre Royal from Friday 1st to Saturday 9th May, ahead of a national tour. First staged in Bristol in 2019, this brilliant staging of a favourite…
SPITFIRE Girls, Katherine Senior’s dramatised story of the Second World War female pioneers who flew Spitfires, is back on tour, coming to Salisbury Playhouse from 5th to 9th May. Inspired by remarkable true events, Tilted Wig’s production, which began as a co-production with MAST Studio in Southampton, opens on New Year’s Eve, 1959. Decades after…
CONSTANCE Middleton has everything – a loving family, a beautiful home, a fulfilling career and a husband as devoted to her as he is to his mistress. What could possibly go wrong? The answers may surprise you in the RSC production of The Constant Wife which comes to Poole Lighthouse from 27th April to 2nd…
WHEN Patricia Highsmith published her first Ripley story, The Talented Mr Ripley, in 1955, she created an anti-hero who would become one of her favourite characters and the star of many television and film adaptations. Ripley has now undergone another metamorphosis in a stage version, coming to Salisbury Playhouse, from Monday 27th April to Saturday…
TWO popular small touring theatre companies have got together to produce a new comedy, General Medical Emergency Ward 10, which continues at Tacchi Morris Arts Centre at Taunton on 21st April. Award‑winning Dyad Productions and Company Gavin Robertson have reimagined the worlds of Holby City, Casualty, ER, Grey’s Anatomy, Doctors and many more in this…
A PLAY that began as a 20-minute short has been developed into a full-length solo show, which Dorsetborn is premiering at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre on Wednesday and Thursday 15th and 16th April. Described as a romcom-thriller, Lessons from Teacher x explores love, suspicion and the warring roles we play in adult life. Cam is…
VETERAN actor,David Westhead, takes on the challenge of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, in a new production coming to Tobacco Factory Theatres in Bedminster, Bristol, on 27th and 28th April. Krapp’s Last Tape is a journey through an old man’s life, filled with hilarious memories and hopes for the future, coupled with the mourning of…
THE first major revival of the musical version of Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman comes to Bristol Old Vic from 29th April to 16th May, and to Southampton’s Mayflower Theatre from 2nd to 6th June. Set in an Argentinian prison, Molina, imprisoned for his homosexuality, is put in a cell with political prisoner…