EVERY year more people look out for those little black stickers with one, two or three gold stars – Great Taste Awards from the Dorset-based Guild of Fine Food. This year’s West Country results include 27 products gaining the top three-star status, and a finalist from the region for the overall national Golden Fork awards….
A LIGHTHOUSE is a symbol of hope and safety, light in sometimes frightening darkness, a welcome hint of hope if the ship is foundering or there is a man overboard. In her debut play, The Light House, coming to Somerset’s Take Art rural touring charity in September, writer-performer Alys Williams explores a real life story…
PURBECK, with its dramatic coastline, is inextricably linked to the sea, and this is the theme of this year’s Purbeck International Chamber Music Festival, from 3rd to 6th September. Artistic director, and internationally acclaimed cellist, Natalie Clein has chosen this theme because the sea connects and separates, carries memory and myth, and reflects the depths…
THE Billings, a dedicated community venue at the heart of the Theatre Royal Bath, will open in spring 2027. This will be the fourth and final public and performance space within the theatre’s historic city centre site. The project, funded with support from more than 4,200 donors, has been fully approved, and work is now…
WHEN Thomas Meehan was first approached to write the book for a musical based on the comic strip Little Orphan Annie, after careful research he decided that none of the stories contained in Harold Gray’s cartoon comic strip, which was printed in newspapers from 1924 to 2010, would make a good basis for a stage…
LIFE is strange, particularly in the theatre. You wait years for a chocolate soldier … and then two come along in the same week. First we had the original, George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man at the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis (see separate review) – and a few days later there was The Chocolate…
YEOVIL’s extraordinary record of producing brilliant young performers and choreographers – including Christopher Wheeldon – continues with James Bamford, who brings his Project Dance company to Westlands on 27th and 28th August with his new work, Things I’ve Never Said. James’s fourth annual touring production, set to an original live score by Charles Harrison, is…
THE first stage adaptation of former spy John Le Carre’s 1963 novel The Spy Who Came In from the Cold starts with an introduction to the settings and the characters. It is 1961, the audience is told in Jeremy Herrin’s Chichester production, which is ending its lengthy UK tour at Bath, until 22nd August. The…
SOME years ago, the campaigning environmental charity Common Ground published a booklet exploring the idea of souvenirs and the difference between trinkets and geegaws – nylon tartan, plastic scallop shells – mass-produced on the other side of the world, and locally produced crafts that carried a connection to their place. If you are in Devon…
IN the course of a summer, we reviewers get to see many plays in fields, on coasts, in the grounds of stately homes and in beautiful private gardens, performed by intrepid actors and singers who brave the elements to entertain their loyal and devoted audiences. The summer touring open air theatre season has evolved into an…
BRIDPORT is celebrating the raucous, chaotic, energetic, musical blast that was punk and the infectious, joyful sounds of reggae with an exhibition at the arts centre featuring photographs by Adrian Boot, and a couple of punk rebooted gigs on 21st August, in collaboration with Clocktower Records. The two-band gigs feature Nasty Fishmonger, a folk-punk fivesome…
“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…
CHARLES Dickens was only 24 years old when he started writing the first instalment of what is now known as The Pickwick Papers. Samuel Pickwick and his friends, failed lover Tracy Tupman, would-be sporting gent Nathaniel Winkle and nervy poet Augustus Snodgrass, set forth from London to discover life around England (Manchester was not mentioned)….
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…
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…
IF you are old enough to remember the tragic death of Grace Archer in a fire in the stables at Brookfield (in 1955), you have been a fan of the world’s longest running soap for most of its existence. This year marks the 75th anniversary of The Archers, and there are two ways you can…
AN artists collective who originally got together in 2021 with a touring exhibition across the south west are reconvening in August with an exhibition reviewing their five year journey and beginning another in Bath and Bruton between 24th August and 27th September. Travelling to eight locations over the summer of 2021, Inch by IN:CH took…
A SIX-piece band, with a repertoire that extends from folk to cabaret, comes to the Beehive Centre in Honiton on Saturday 22nd August. Nothing Concrete, based in the French Pyrenees, is led by Scottish songwriter Fergus McKay. Rooted in original songwriting, the band brings together a wide range of influences, blending blues, world music, jazz,…
THERE’s precious little “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” as Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre heads into autumn. Rather, the arts centre is ripping it up with a short season of cult films that explored and celebrated different aspects of youth rebellion. Since the 1950s, youth culture in this country has a wide and varied history,…
WHEN the great Martin Carthy unexpectedly retired, as he was due to go on tour with his daughter Eliza, she decided to continue the tour as a tribute to her father, and will be one of the major draws at this year’s Lyme Regis Folk Weekend, from Friday 28th to Sunday 30th August. Eliza Carthy…
SMALL but mighty in its reach and influence – that would be a fair description of the Barn, the tiny independent theatre in Cirencester, which has announced the London transfer of its hit show, Million Dollar Quartet. Following an extended summer run at its Cotswold home, the show, with a cast led by Darren Day,…
THE August exhibition at Durlston Country Park’s Fine Foundation Gallery, is Interaction of Light, paintings and limited edition prints by the acclaimed watercolourist Cathy Veale. The exhibition runs until Sunday 23rd August and the gallery is open from 10.30am to 4.30pm. Cathy specialises in large seascapes with a distinctive style that is rich in luminosity…
BURTON Bradstock’s arts festival is renowned for the wide spectrum of music played by ensembles and soloists, led by violinist and artistic director David Juritz, alongside an exhibition of West Country arts, ceramics and crafts in the historic village hall. This year’s 44th annual festival runs from 15th to 23rd August. The majority of the…
NON-professional musicians and instrumentalists across the UK are invited to enter for the BSO Music-Making Competition, which returns for a second year, sponsored by Lark Music, part of Howden. Entry is free and the closing date for applications is 3rd September. The panel of industry judges includes broadcaster and writer Tom Service, guitarist Dagan Wilkin…
FOR the first time in 30 years, there has been a confirmed sighting of a puffling on the vertiginous Purbeck cliffs. The news of the puffin fledgling gives hope for Dorset’s dwindling puffin colony, says the National Trust, which manages the Dancing Ledge area. The sighting follows monitoring by 13 volunteers who spent 150 hours…
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…