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…
A NEW play by Stephanie Dale, writer of two of Dorset’s successful community plays, uncovers stories of some of the remarkable women from Dorset’s past. Unearthed has its premiere with Dorchester Arts at the Corn Exchange on Friday 24th and Saturday 25th July, followed by two more performances at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre on Friday…
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…
WITH each day and each latest horrifying news item, the war in the Middle East becomes more worrying and spreads ever further. It is, for those who take the “long view” as Jonathan Freedland calls it in his BBC Radio 4 programmes, a war that was always on the cards, in a region that has…
HISTORIC performance duo GreenMatthews are touring arts venues with their new show, Midsummer Revels, with local dates at Pound Arts, Corsham, on 6th June, the Museum of Rural Life at Glastonbury on 17th June and the Corn Exchange at Dorchester on Sunday 21st June. Chris Green and Sophie Matthews are modern-day balladeers, specialising in telling…
FANS of Yes, Prime Minister may sometimes have wondered what happened to the Right Hon Jim Hacker when he left No 10 – or to his nemesis, the inscrutable and indefatigable Sir Humphrey. Well, now you can find out, as the pair return for one final theatrical outing in I’m Sorry, Prime Minister, at 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…
DORCHESTER has a record-breaking history of community plays … and now the work is starting on number eight. What will its theme be? The Dorchester community play phenomenon began in 1985 with Entertaining Strangers. In the ensuing 40 years, local residents, with professional writers including Ann Jellicoe, David Edgar and Stephanie Dale, have created an…
WHILE the Bloomsbury set – Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell et al – is most frequently associated with their unconventional and creative lives in London and Sussex, the Bloomsbury Group also had strong Wiltshire connections, which are celebrated in the summer exhibition at Salisbury Museum in the Cathedral Close, and in a commissioned play, which will…
SINGER-songwriter Sarah McQuaid is touring again, featuring songs from the new album which she will be recording at the studio at her home in the far west of Cornwall. She will be at Crediton Arts Centre on 5th June, Holy Trinity Church at Westward Ho! on 12th, Parracombe Village Hall on 19th and at Torquay’s…
SIXTEEN days of visual arts celebration, exploring the galleries, studios and arts centres of Dorset, begins with the return of the biennial Dorset Art Weeks, this year from 23rd May to 7th June. More than 290 venues, from Highcliffe to Monkton Wykd, will have work by painters, potters, printmakers, photographers, sculptors, textile artists, makers and…
“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…
A FALCON, a contemporary take on a Shakespearean tragedy and a celebration of one of the greatest singer-songwriters provide the picks of spring and early summer for Moviola audiences. Laden with awards, the film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 acclaimed novel, Hamnet, focuses on William Shakespeare’s wife Agnes, an unconventional Tudor woman, with a mysterious…
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…
CONFESSIONAL comedian Suzi Ruffell brings her new show, The Juggle, to the Marine Theatre at Lyme Regis on Friday 5th June and to Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre the following evening, Saturday 6th. It’s hard to be good all the time, says Suzi. A good mother, a good daughter, a good partner, a good friend, a…
OPERA Anywhere is touring with a delightful new adaptation of Mozart’s satire Cosi Fan Tutte. The company will be performing the wickedly funny “Thus do all women” story of two flirtatious young women, two jealous (and rather stupid) young men, an old cynic and a very smart maid. Directed by Tristan Stocks, edited and adapted…
JENEBA Kanneh-Mason, the fifth of the seven remarkable Kanneh-Mason musical siblings, returns to Dorchester Corn Exchange on Tuesday 2nd June at 7.30, welcomed back after her Dorchester Arts debut in 2023. Her programme for this return visit features works by Bach (Partita No 5), Beethoven (Sonata No 17, Tempest), William Grant Still (Summerland), Debussy (La…
AXE Vale Orchestra, conducted by Walter Brewster, gives its summer concert at the Minster on Sunday 7th June at 3.30pm. The afternoon programme includes Bizet’s Petite Suite: Jeux d’enfants, Dvorak’s Romance for violin and orchestra, with soloist Jane Bultz, and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The audience can enjoy tea and cake after the concert. The Axe…
ONE of this country’s most distinguished and critically acclaimed actresses, Dame Harriet Walter is coming to the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis, for a fund-raising evening on Sunday 14th June. A star of stage and screen for 40 years, Dame Harriet has a long and illustrious relationship with both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National…
WE all love a good sit-com. Think of some of your television favourites – Gavin & Stacy, Car Share, Porridge, The Likely Lads, Dad’s Army … Most of these comedy classics, and many others, were written by partnerships of talented writers. This is the starting point of Situation Comedy, the summer production by Yeovil’s Civic Players,…
BATH’S Egg theatre has a delightful show for children and their families over the May half term, from Thursday 28th to Sunday 31st May, when Let’s All Dance Ballet Company presents Alice in Wonderland. This magical ballet is recommended for children aged two years and over. Come and join Alice as she enters the curiouser…
ANYONE who has visited the great Tisbury tithe barn, now home to the Messums West contemporary art gallery, will understand why the word “cathedral” comes to mind – and the new installation, Forest Cathedral, takes this as its inspiration, creating a powerful experience for visitors to the 700-year old building, with its awe-inspiring, soaring timber…
ROGER Fry, painter and member of the Bloomsbury Group, is celebrated in a new exhibition at the Museum of Somerset,Taunton, on until 4th July. A Life in Art: Roger Fry is a major new exhibition exploring the life, work and influence of one of the most important figures in 20th century British art. The exhibition…