THREE acclaimed actors – Toby Stephens, Amanda Abbington and Noah Valentine – play the leading roles in Peter Shaffer’s dark, probing masterpiece, Equus, which comes to Bath Theatre Royal from Tuesday 14th to Saturday 25th July, in a production directed by Lindsay Posner, which received rave reviews when it premiered at the Menier Chocolate Factory….
COVENT Garden Dance this year celebrates its 20th anniversary of presenting world-class ballet and dance. Since 2009 it has produced Ballet Under the Stars, the “Glyndebourne of dance”, a highly anticipated date in the south Wiltshire calendar, in the beautiful 17th century Dutch walled garden at Hatch House near Tisbury. This year’s Ballet at Hatch,…
IFORD Opera – now If Opera – celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, from 6th to 16th August, returning for a second year to Church Farm, Wingfield, near Bradford-on-Avon, with a programme which combines wit, tragic drama, Viennese sparkle, baroque boozing and the golden age of jazz and swing. The opening night, Thursday 6th August,…
CERNE Abbas, with its (in)famous chalk giant, has for 35 years been the setting for one of the region’s most delightful boutique chamber music festivals. This July, founder, Dorset-born clarinettist Richard Hosford brings a group of internationally renowned musicians back to the village for three concerts in the historic St Mary’s Church. Originally based around…
RENOWNED folk singer, cellist and viola player, a founder member of folk big band Bellowhead, Rachael McShane brings her own band, The Cartographers, to Dorset for three dates, 18th and 19th July and 23rd August, at Studland, Marnhull and Buckland Newton village halls. Hailing from the north east of England, McShane rose to prominence with…
THE tragic sinking of the Titanic is one of the best-known stories in maritime history – but how much do we know about the people who survived from the lower decks? A remarkable one-man play, coming to Dorchester Arts at the Corn Exchange on Tuesday 14th July at 7.30pm, tells the story of a stoker…
A MERE mention of the name Mrs Danverss ends a shard of ice down the spines of most fans of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. That’s if you only know her as the terrifying housekeeper of Manderley. Find out more in a new one-woman play, Becoming Mrs Danvers, at Bridport Arts Centre on Saturday 18th July,…
THE Four Seasons rock band was formed in 1960 when two members of the novelty act The Four Lovers, singer Frankie Valli and guitarist Tommy DeVito, were joined by bass player Nick Massi and composer and keyboard player Bob Gaudio. With changing personal, but always with the strong high falsetto voice of Frankie Valli as…
FOR those of us of a certain age, it seems incredible that the television series Fawlty Towers had only 12 half-hour episodes when it was first shown in 1975 … more than 50 years ago. Its set-piece scenes and catch phrases – and of course Sybil’s laugh – fast entered the Comedy Hall of Fame,…
POLLY Lamb’s latest play, Your Move, was sold out before it opened at the Town Hall, playing for the first three days of Frome Festival 2026. Once again, town councillor and fair housing advocate Lamb has created a play that taps into the concerns of the 2020s, focussing on the “new” ways we live and the…
THE adventurous Egg theatre at Bath Theatre Royal is premiering a new adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved classic The Secret Garden, from Thursday 2nd to Sunday 26th July. The new disability-led production is celebrating the Egg’s 21st birthday, with a series of initiatives to support emotional wellbeing. The venue, which opened in 2005, will…
THE two top films for Moviola screenings in this region in July and August are both serious – H is for Hawk and Hamlet. H is for Hawk is a biographical drama, directed by Philippa Lowthorpe, who co-wrote the screenplay with Emma Donoghue, based on the 2014 memoir by naturalist Helen MacDonald. It stars Claire…
THERE is nothing light and humorous about Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello, and its overt racism poses a problem for some theatre companies. So it might not be seen as the ideal choice for an open air play, where the audience wants action, fun and laughter to go with their picnics and (in this heatwave) increasing consumption…
THE summer 2026 exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral is Joyful Noise, contemporary art works by internationally renowned artists, on show until 25th October. The show brings together painting, sculpture, text, video and sound artworks to explore how joyful noise can affirm presence, belief, community, and care. The exhibition includes works by Denzil Forrester, Christine Sun Kim,…
IF you know anything about the early years of rock’n’roll, the names Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley will be top of anyone’s list of performers. Add in the unmistakeable voice and charisma of Johnny Cash and you have a recipe for … Million Dollar Quartet, returning to Cirencester’s Barn Theatre for a…
A PAINTING by John Constable, which has been unseen in Salisbury for more than 60 years, is finally going on show at the Salisbury Museum in a landmark moment for the institution. View of Salisbury from Harnham Ridge, a major discovery in the artist’s catalogue that has been hidden away in a private collection since…
A TINY bird that is easy to miss, but which has a distinctive song, is back from the brink of extinction with nearly 100 pairs at RSPB Arne this year. The Amber listed Dartford Warbler suffered from a population crash in the 1960s, leaving only a few pairs in Dorset and the species on the…
“THE ship is in her trim; the merry wind blows fair from land*” – exactly the message you need as you’ve packed the picnic basket, stowed the chairs in the car, checked your tickets on the phone (?) and set off for an evening in the open air, surrounded by trees and hedgerows, all ready…
JUST a year on since the first beavers were released into the wild at Studland, the natural eco engineers have been transforming woodland, dramatically reshaping part of the local landscape and turning a previously dense area of woodland into a thriving wildlife-rich wetland. The pair have built an extensive dam which has slowed the flow…
THE 2026 Dorset Opera Festival brings one of the great tragic dramas of the repertoire to the stage of the Coade Hall at Bryanston School, and the return of a favourite comic opera from 21st to 25th July. There are performances of Saint-Saens’ Samson et Dalila on Wednesday 22nd and Thursday 23rd at 7pm, and…
WHITCOMBE Manor hosts the annual Dorchester Arts summer party with music, on Sunday 19th July from 1pm, with star performer Liza Pulman providing the entertainment. The beautiful 300-year old manor is the home of best-selling crime and historical novelist Minette Walters, and her husband Alec. Liza Pulman returns to Dorset after a sold out appearance…
BRIDPORT’s Art Deco theatre, the Electric Palace, is a stylish setting for a Jazz Jurassica event on Saturday 18th July at 3pm, celebrating Blue Note and the history of jazz. The Sound of Blue Note — the band — takes its name from a sound that shaped jazz history. It’s a sound that jazz buffs…
THE Jurassic coast can now boast a second summer play festival – just a few miles east of Sidmouth, with its Manor Pavilion summer season, the Marine Theatre at Lyme Regis welcomes the return of the professional Gilroy Theatre Company, with a season of five plays, from 28th July to 28th August. The first is…
LESSER-known baroque composers, including Barbara Strozzi, take centre place in Ceruleo’s programme for the July series of Concerts at Bridport Arts Centre for the coffee time concert at 11.30am on Friday 10th July, Ilminster Arts Centre at 7.30pm that evening and Saturday 11th at 7.30pm at Crewkerne Dance House. Described as a group that “feels…
GRAHAM Greene had a dry sense of humour, never better shown than in Our Man In Havana, which has been adapted for the stage by the actor and writer Clive Francis. The new comedy of a vacuum cleaner salesman caught up in espionage in pre-revolutionary Cuba comes to Salisbury Playhouse from 14th to 18th July…
PICTURESQUE Sidmouth is not only a delightful seaside resort and home to the country’s oldest folk festival, it also has the longest-running traditional summer rep season, at the Manor Pavilion theatre, this year continuing to Saturday 19th September. For three months, with a week out for Sidmouth Folk Festival, the theatre has a weekly professional…
FROME celebrates the 25th anniversary of its multi-arts festival this year – and the festival opens on 3rd July, just two days after the funeral of Martin Bax, the actor, former town and district councillor and mayor, who became one of Frome’s most loved and valued citizens. A former actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Martin…
WHAT is it that every woman wants? That’s the central question posed by the Wife of Bath in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It’s something that less-enlightened men think they instinctively know. It is also the framework for the Rude Mechanicals’ 2026 summer tour, The Wife. Writer Pete Talbot, an MBE recipient in the King’s Birthday Honours for…
IF you are a fan of the popular television series The Detectorists you will know that the curious and occasionally eccentric people who head out into the countryside with their metal detectors sometimes make remarkable discoveries. A Dorset detectorist discovered a beautiful Early Bronze Age mirror and another found an equally rare and exquisite crescent-shaped…
HOW many actors does it take to perform Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, dramatis personae of 15 plus extra? The answer is five – and you hardly miss a thing. The Festival Players, formed in 1986 and an all-male troupe since 2014, has chosen the hilarious play of identical twins, mistaken identities, lost love and…