STUNNING is the only word to describe Martyn Jessop’s performance as The Creature in the Street Theatre production of Nick Dear’s riveting adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Director Adam Lanfranchi chose this play, first seen in 2011 at the National Theatre, with no thought of caution. His programme notes underline that its exploration of the…
MAJOR national annual dates these days are at least as much about selling as they are about celebrating – and that’s certainly the case in Terry’s: An American Tragedy About Cars, Customers, and Selling Cars to Customers, coming to Dorchester Arts at the Corn Exchange on Thursday 13th November. Memorial Day weekend … the US-of-A….
YES, you read that right – “ice (not nice) music”. Pioneering Norwegian musician Terje Isungset is bringing his mesmerising ice quartet to Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre on Wednesday 19th November, with two more dates in our region, 21st November at St George’s, Bristol, and 22nd at the Turner Sims hall at Southampton University. Also known…
AFTER months of building work, the Swan Theatre in Yeovil is re-opening on 17th November with a production of Ted Tally’s Terra Nova – the story of Scott’s famous expedition to the Antarctic between 1910 and 1913. Officially it was the British Antarctic Expedition, led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, and with various scientific and…
WRIGHT and Grainger are two men who met at school and both became obsessed with the Greek myths and their timeless relevance, which is certainly having a moment in these days of divided nations at war, very silly people who think they are gods and mindless people who bolster those delusions. The duo has developed…
AARON Sorkin’s acclaimed adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird comes to Bath Theatre Royal from 11th to 22nd November on its first UK and Ireland tour after its critically praised runs on Broadway and in the West End. Richard Coyle plays Atticus Finch, the role created by Gregory Peck in the 1962 film…
GEOFF Norcott is that very rare thing in the UK comedy scene – he is a Conservative! But coming out as a right-winger hasn’t impeded his career too badly, and he is now on a new tour, Basic Bloke 2 – “There’s no Bloke without Fire” – coming to the Electric Palace at Bridport on…
THE Mowlem Theatre at Swanage has stood proudly overlooking the sea for almost 60 years, sometimes battered by winds, rain and even snow. But now the old roof is leaking and the theatre has launched an urgent crowdfunding appeal for £10,000 to stop the leaks and save the building. This much-loved community space has a…
A RISING star of the cello, 16 year-old Hugo Svedberg, joins the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra on Thursday 13th November, at Exeter University Great Hall, for a concert entitled Sunshine and Shade. He will be playing one of Tchaikovsky’s best-loved pieces, the Variations on a Rococo Theme, a work characterised by carefree charm, grace and the…
BATH is a beautiful city, delightful at any time of year, but late autumn brings one of its special treats, the annual Mozartfest. This year, running from 7th to 15th November, to brings outstanding musicians, including the Carducci, Consone, Castalian and Schumann string quartets, acclaimed soloists Imogen Cooper, Cedric Tiberghien and Jennifer Pike, and larger…
THERE is no question that Venice makes an indelible impression, and that mixture of enchantment, beauty and menace was never better captured than by Nic Roeg’s 1973 masterpiece Don’t Look Now, with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland at its heart. In 2007 playwright Nell Leyshon created a stage adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier short…
THE new exhibition at the top floor gallery at Poole’s Lighthouse art centre is an inversion of the usual form of words describing artworks. The Art of Poetry, running to 22nd November, is art created in response to the written word. Technically described as the reverse of the literary device of ekphrasis, in which language…
NOTHING explores the depths of emotion and drama like a great movie melodrama, and a new season of films at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre, starting on 4th November, sets out to celebrate the genre with a programme that ranges from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? to Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet. The BFI Film Audience…
When two members of Living Spit are overheard bragging about how good they are, Zeus, up there on Olympus, is enraged by their hubris and decides to teach them a lesson –join them as they bring Too Many Greek Myths to Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire, and find out how the king of the Greek gods…
A MASTERPIECE of silent cinema, set in one of the world’s greatest cathedrals, will be screened in another – Salisbury Cathedral, on Saturday 15th November, when The Hunchback of Notre Dame will be shown, with a live organ score. Jonathan Hope, one of the most dynamic organists of his generation, will improvise a live organ…
GALLOWS humour is a curious aspect of the human psyche – laughter is the best antidote to fear, probably. The laughs are dark and the subject matter even darker when Ha Hum Ah Theatre brings its new play, Making A Killing, on tour locally and coming to Dorset with Artsreach on 11th and 14th November….
SOMERSET artists James and Kate Lynch, who live on a hill overlooking the Somerset Levels, have both had work selected for The Life of the Fields, a major exhibition at St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery in Lymington, one of the most adventurous and prestigious galleries in the area. The exhibition runs to 10th January…
THREE leading local galleries all have exciting exhibitions for the autumn – The Art Stable at Gold Hill Organic Farm, Child Okeford, has a retrospective on the work of the late David Gommon. Sladers Yard at West Bay celebrates mother and daughter Marzia Colonna and Fiamma Colonna Montagu, and the Slade Centre at Gillingham looks…
WELSH storyteller Shon-Dale Jones is back on tour with a new show, Stories From An Invisible Town, with final dates in the area at Bath Theatre Royal’s Ustinov Studio on 17th and 18th November. Shôn is first and foremost a storyteller. He’s honest, inventive, and deeply human … curious, restless, wide-eyed, offbeat and resonant. His…
IT is never a good idea to take over a job when the previous incumbent has been highly successful, but there is always an exception to every rule and Amelia Freedman well and truly proved that when, just over 30 years ago, she took over the role of artistic director of the Bath Mozart fest…
DORSET has a special connection with Jane Austen, and what better way for theatre groups in the county to celebrate her 250th anniversary than with a production of Persuasion, with its famous and critical scenes in Lyme Regis? Dorchester Drama is staging Persuasion at the Corn Exchange on 21st and 22nd November. This book, Austen’s…
SHAFTESBURY Arts Centre hosts an exhibition, Droves and Downs, until 18th November, featuring work by four artists who were awarded bursaries by Dorset Visual Arts to create a body of work inspired by the Cranborne Chase National Landscape. Via an open call, artists were invited by DVA to submit proposals to explore the different facets…
MERE Amateur Dramatic Society will be taking audiences out of the seasonal baking and present-packing frenzy to the far-from-festive setting of Occupied France for the winter production – ‘Allo ‘Allo 2, “The Camembert Caper” at the Lecture Hall from 19th to 22nd November. Based on the hit TV series, this sequel to the popular stage production…
SINGER song-writer Louise Jordan, who specialises in telling the hidden histories of women over the past couple of centuries, takes audiences back to the dark times of occupied France and the courageous women of the Special Operations Executive in her new show, which has two more dates in the New Forest, on Saturday 15th November,…
SOMERSET’S world famous Guy Fawkes Carnival circuit is under way, with its first outing on Saturday 1st November at Bridgwater. The spectacular, colourful, noisy and inventive carts are devised and built over 11 months of the year, ready to be unveiled to their astonished and delighted audiences filling the streets of the eight towns, this…
UNTIL a few months ago, the names of Moth and Raynor Winn provoked respect and admiration, and the their story was filmed as The Salt Path, with a stellar cast featuring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. That critically-praised film is the most-requested on Moviola’s November programme. In July, The Observer newspaper broke the story which…
STORY Weaver Becky Burchell is inviting women (and men!) to take part in one of a series of four Dark Skies walks on Cranborne Chase, ending on 15th November. The creative arts producer originally created Women of the Dark Skies “to invite women to walk in the footsteps of the female ancestors of this land….
THERE is apparently a powerful connection between medicine and comedy – look at the number of doctors and other medics who have combined stand-up with their work, or moved over entirely from the operating theatre to the performing theatre. Take Georgie Carroll, a nurse who has been playing to sell-out audiences for some years. Her…
AN exhibition, at Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury, from 27th September to 10th January 2026, A Life Outside: Hope Bourne on Exmoor, offers a new appraisal of the work and life of the Exmoor writer and artist. Created in partnership with The Exmoor Society, which cares for The Hope L Bourne Collection, the exhibition considers…