SHAKESPEARE’s The Winter’s Tale is a very strange play . . . famous for suspension of disbelief that even extends to the appearance of a bear. At the end of his writing career, Shakespeare was moving into new territory. This hybrid drama combines tragedy and imminent disaster with bawdy comedy and earthy high spirits. After…
YOUNG actors are getting ready for the senior Tri.art Theatre School production at Frome’s Merlin Theatre this summer, where rehearsals are in progress for Les Miserables. The schools edition of Les Mis, set against the backdrop of 19th-century France, is an enthralling story of broken dreams and unrequited love, passion, sacrifice and redemption – a timeless…
THE Halse Players have chosen Gareth Armstrong’s play Fondly Remembered for their summer show, and it’s on stage at the village hall on Friday and Saturday 18th and 19th August at 7.30. Directed by Caroline Cook, the play tells the story of four actor friends, all at or nearing the end of their working lives,…
THIS year’s Theatre Royal Bath youth summer production is a new adaptation of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, on stage at the egg from 24th to 27th August. From Monday 7th, a company of 30 young actors will be rehearsing the play, written by Bristol-based Miriam Battye specially for the summer school, which…
THE award-winning company Highcliffe Charity Players return to the stage at the Regent Centre in Christchurch from 26th to 29th with their summer production, the musical Made in Dagenham. Set in the swinging 60s, this is the inspiring and heart-warming story of a group of female factory workers at the Ford Dagenham plant, fighting for…
PUPILS from Priestlands School in Lymington are travelling to the Regent Centre in Christchurch to stage their summer production, Oliver!, on Wednesday and Thursday 19th and 20th July. Lionel Bart’s his show, which will accompanied by a band of student musicians, is the first time that Priestlands has performed at the Regent. The school has…
TENNESSEE Williams’ classic play A Streetcar Named Desire is next on stage at Salisbury’s Studio Theatre in Ashley Road, from Monday 17th to Saturday 22nd July. Directed by Tamsin Jacson, the play is set in New Orleans in the late 1940s. Stella and her husband Stanley Kowalski live in a tiny, run-down apartment. Stella’s sister…
SHAFTESBURY Arts Centre’s drama group will perform the Alan Bennett adaptation of Kenneth Graham’s classic, Wind in the Willows, at the Bell Street theatre from 11th to 15th July and 19th to 22nd July. The audience will be transported back to a time before motorways, lorries and Chelsea Tractors – to a time when life …
YEOVIL’S Swan Theatre will be welcoming The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society to the stage from Monday 17th to Saturday 22nd July, where, if the production goes according to plan, a Murder Mystery will be enacted. David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin Jr’s hilarious spoof, directed by Andy Taylor, is one of a…
FROME Drama Club’s entry in the 2017 Frome Festival is The Regina Monologues, performed at The Silk Mill from 10th to 12th July and starting at 7.45. The clever title offers a feast of monologues by six characters based on the events as history has recorded them, of the six wives of Henry the Eighth,…