MAGIC can happen when the stars align, the gods unite and the time is right. That fickle chance beamed down on King Street in Bristol at the moment when writer Max Porter, director Nancy Medina, adaptor Bea Roberts and designer Rebecca Jane Wood agreed to adapt Porter’s 2019 book for the stage. The result is…
EDWARD Bond described his 1973 play The Sea as a tragicomedy, and certainly, in Jonathan Munby’s new production for Bath Theatre Royal, there are strong elements of both the epically tragic and the hilariously comedic. And there are elements of lots of other theatrical tropes, too. The puzzled audience can look out for moments of…
BRISTOL Old Vic Theatre School, which this year celebrates 80 years since it opened at the suggestion of Sir Laurence Olivier as a training arm for the Old Vic theatre, has an exciting end to 2026. Former student Gregory Doran returns to the city to direct current students in Romeo and Juliet, on the floor…
ADAM Lanfranchi has a theory about Samuel Beckett’s legendary absurdist play Waiting for Godot – that attempting a definitive explanation is a mug’s game. So when the chance came to direct the play for Street’s Strode Theatre, Adam chose his own cast from actors from around the region, gave them the scripts and sent them…
IF there’s one thing we all need in these difficult days, it’s a bit of warming comfort – and that is just what the members of Yeovil Amateur Operatic Society are offering in Sherborne this week. The venerable society makes its first foray out of the home town in 124 years, into the 218 seater…
THE acting students from Arts University Bournemouth will be performing a version of George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, 1984, in the studio theatre on their Wallisdown campus from 29th to 31st October. Celebrated director Robert Icke worked with Duncan Macmillan on the adaptation of the 1949 novel in 2013, and their version has been chosen…
ANY fans of Natalie Haynes will have a clear comedic knowledge of those old Greek Gods sitting on Mount Olympus and changing themselves into various more or less attractive birds and insects in order to seduce unsuspecting human women. Their antics come to hilarious life by courtesy of Jacques Offenbach in his operetta Orpheus in…
TREVOR Pinnock, harpsichordist and one of the leading figures in period performance music, is coming to Tisbury on Thursday 29th October to conduct the Cherubim Chamber Strings in a programme of mainly baroque music, The event is celebrating the silver jubilee of the Cherubim Music Trust, a Tisbury-based national charity that loans professional calibre orchestral…
IF you were one of the thousands – millions, internationally – who gazed in wonder as the moon eclipsed the sun in mid-August, it may have stirred deep thoughts about our small part in the cosmos, and the impact space has on human existence and culture. This year’s Constellation Symposium at Springhead, Fontmell Magna, from…
SOMERSET-based, certified organic cheesemaker Feltham’s Farm is producing its first organic cheese hamper for Christmas, bringing together some of the UK’s finest organic artisan cheeses and accompaniments to celebrate nature-friendly festive food and the farmers and makers behind it. Curated by Marcus Fergusson and Penny Nagle of Feltham’s Farm, founders of the Organic Cheesemakers’ Network,…