NOEL Coward’s timeless comedy Blithe Spirit was just the thing war-ravaged Londoners needed in 1941, and it might just provide the lift we need in these crazy, frightening days 84 years later. Anthony Banks’ new production is played out on a stylish set designed by Terry Parsons, an opulent Art Deco drawing room with its…
DORSET’s much-loved folk duo Ninebarrow are releasing a new album at the beginning of October, a celebration not only of the vocal harmonies of the two musicians but also of the joy of choirs singing together. The Hour of the Blackbird marks a departure for Jon Whitley and Jay LaBouchardiere, who have worked with two…
PATRONS. poets, pupils, printers, performers, publishers … pirates! The roll call of women who contributed to the development and distribution of music from the Renaissance through to the Enlightenment is nothing if not surprising! The multi-instrumental female quartet Sounds Historical came to the Medieval Hall in Salisbury Cathedral Close on the opening night of the…
FOR a TV series that lasted only two series – 64 episodes between 1964 and 1966 – The Addams Family has remarkable longevity. Helped by continual showings on late night TV and four films featuring the characters, it was almost inevitable that someone (Andrew Lippa) would add music and, adapt (Marchal; Brickman and Rick Elice)…
MORE contradictory stories and legends – including how she acquired the nickname of Calamity Jane – have probably been told about Martha Jane Canary than of any other frontierswoman of the second half of the 19th century. Thanks to Jean Arthur’s portrayal in Cecil B DeMille’s The Plainsman, and the wonderfully effervescent Doris Day, in…
FOR many years, one of the great teats a group of us enjoyed was to go on Shrove Tuesday to a friend’s house to enjoy home-made pancakes. Good cook as she was, we were never offered the first pancake made, because she said it was never up to the standard of those that followed. Anyone…
WITH a few brush strokes in his paintings The Finish and The Greyhound, artist John Skeaping created all the power, grace and beauty of two horses fighting out the finish of a race, and a greyhound’s elegance of movement. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first and best known of his seven…
SINCE its first performances in 1957, in French and later in English, Samuel Beckett’s Endgame has been subjected to endless debate, interpretation and controversy, by academics, students, theatre-goers and critics. Regarded by many as the greatest work by the Irish Nobel literature laureate, the play was written while the writer lived in France, where the…
THERE are several definitions of the term Pot Licker, and the one that describes mischievous Icelandic Yule Lads pranksters fits Dorset-based playwright Ed Viney’s play extremely well. Just as the Yule Lad licks a pot clean, leaving not a morsel behind, so Viney explores the fate of three school teachers who, faced with the problem…
JOHN Godber’s 1977 play Bouncers was once voted the nation’s most popular play, and has been performed at the National Theatre, toured the world and been staged by countless amateur companies in its almost 50-year long life. The current production at Sherborne’s Studio Theatre, directed by Sarah Webster, is my first encounter with this story…