BADGER’S Drift will get a bit of a break from homicide when the curtain comes down on Midsomer Murders at Bath on Saturday 14th June – but not for long. The success of this first staging of the popular TV series on its opening UK tour, which started in November 2025, means it has 14 more…
CRIME and punishment, deportation and the consequences of artistic deprivation are all big news at the moment, in a way they perhaps weren’t in 1991 when Timberlake Wertenbaker wrote her iconic political drama Our Country’s Good. She was inspired by visits to Wormwood Scrubs prison, and the effects that exposure to theatre had on long-term…
WHEN I told a friend that I was going to see a show called We Will Rock You, a jukebox musical based around the music of Queen, they replied “Can’t be done”. When I asked why, they said “Because Freddy Mercury sang all of Queen’s songs and, as you can tell by the lack of…
SIX adult performers Richard Hurst, Tessa Kadler, Rebecca Thornhiil, Adam Stafford, Ryan Lay, and Esther Niles brought a considerable amount of dramatic, vocal and dance talent to the roles of (respectively) Miss Trunchbull, Miss Honey, Mrs and Mr Wormwood, Rudolpho and Mrs Phelps, and thoroughly deserved the warm reception they received when taking their final…
JONATHAN Lynn’s “final chapter” in the story of Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby, now simply titled I’m Sorry, Prime Minister, is back in Bath this week, as part of a summer national tour. Bringing the two old adversaries from the ever-popular TV sitcom up to date, the play opened in Cirencester in 2023. The…
THE Irish seem to have a closer relationship with the mystical, the spiritual … the “other side” than many nations. All the Celtic peoples have their mystical side but the Irish have held on to their mythology more, perhaps because the Romans never conquered them. Maggie O’Farrell was born in Coleraine, in Co Londonderry, and…
SITTING in a darkened room, where the preparation for an act of religious worship is mixed with the visceral fear of discovery, suddenly there’s a pounding at the door … This is a sensation that those who practise banned religions have known for millennia, often with violent, sometimes fatal, consequences. We are warlike animals and…
THE flagship event of this year’s Salisbury International Arts Festival is a challenging new production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, set in and around the brutalist 50-year-old Playhouse and the adjoining car park in the timeless hinterland of tribal feuds and retributions – and it is an astonishing achievement. This really IS what immersive theatre…
MISCHIEF Theatre, best known as the creators of The Play That Goes Wrong, are now out on the road with their first musical, a hilarious story by Jonathan Sayer and Ed Zanders, based on a number of Greek legends, telling how “acting” first started under the murderous eye of The Tyrant in ancient Greece. It…
THE impact of Martin Luther on the history of Christianity and Western Europe is huge and well-known. Perhaps slightly less familiar is his importance as a composer of religious music, sacred hymns and settings of biblical texts. One of the best-known of these is Christ lag in Todesbanden (Christ lay in death’s bonds) and this…