THE new production of The Elephant Man, opening at Bristol Old Vic on Tuesday 26th June, will highlight views of disability and difference both historically in the present day. The central role of Joseph Merrick will be played by Bristol-based disabled actor Jamie Beddard in Bernard Pomerance’s moving play, directed by Lee Lyford. The cast…
A YOUNG boy is looking forward to the arrival of his new baby sister. He can hardly wait. He’s bubbling over with excitement at the start of Tessa Bide’s new play, Perfect, coming to Bridport Arts Centre on Saturday 30th June at 2pm. The boy is thrilled that he will have a new playmate to…
AS the country reels from the shock threat of beer running out before the end of the World Cup, Compton Mackenzie’s legendary comedy Whisky Galore takes to the stage of Salisbury Playhouse. The new adaptation, made by Philip Goulding for Oldham Coliseum, Hull Truck and New Vic Theatre, runs in Salisbury from Monday 25th to…
ANNIE L Cooper’s new play, Broken Wing, opened at the Wharf Theatre in Devizes on Tuesday and runs to Saturday 23rd June. Layee and Thea are 16. One of them is a refugee, coming to terms with the brutal horrors of war. The other, an adopted child, is dealing with her own conflict, wondering who…
THE new Iford Arts production of Handel’s rarely heard Partenope opens at Iford Manor Gardens on Saturday 23rd June, with six performances until 4th July. If visting the Iford Festival is one of the things you’ve always wanted to do, now is your chance, as 2018 will be the final festival in the Harold Peto…
GRADUATING students at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School are staging Moira Buffini’s Welcome to Thebes, set in a fictitious near-future but inspired by ancient myth, at the Tobacco Factory in Bedminster from 21st to 30th June. Directed by Lucy Pitman-Wallace, Welcome to Thebes offers a passionate exploration of an encounter between the world’s richest and…
ARTSREACH, Dorset’s rural touring arts charity, brings Pop-Up Opera with a Mozart double bill of comic operas to Herrison Hall at Charlton Down near Dorchester on Sunday 1st July. Pop-Up Opera made their debut with Artsreach last year, the first time opera had been on offer for village audiences. After the success of the debut…
FORTY years ago, most seaside resorts had theatres as well as “end of the pier shows” and those theatres had repertory seasons, but in 2018 there is only one weekly summer rep surviving, at Sidmouth’s Manor Pavilion. Here from June to September, Paul Taylor Mills produces a weekly rep programme that ranges from favourite thrillers…
INSANE Root, the company that brought Orpheus and Eurydice to the Suspension Bridge Vaults, Macbeth to the Redcliffe Caves, and The Tempest to St John on the Wall’s Crypt, this summer performs Romeo and Juliet in the Eastville Park swimming pool, from 20th June to 29th July. Directed by Hannah Drake, the cast includes Peter…
BATH Theatre Royal’s dedicated youth theatre space, the egg, welcomes back the M6 and Polka Theatre companies for two days of Whatever the Weather, on Friday and Saturday 22nd and 23rd June. The show, aimed at audiences aged three and older with their families, is all about a weather house sitting on a wall. When…