SINGER-songwriter Sarah McQuaid is back in Dorset, performing at Bridport Town Hall on Friday 10th April, as part of a lengthy tour, which features songs from the new album which she will be recording at the studio at her home in the far west of Cornwall. “Settle down, and I’ll try to make a soothing…
ANYONE who watches the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow is sure to have been impressed with the deep knowledge, expertise and enthusiasm of military historian Mark Smith, who is coming to the Electric Palace at Bridport on Wednesday 15th April. Mark Smith, a man who can read a line of medals like most of us can read…
THE new Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Sarah Mullally, made a classic pilgrimage from London to Canterbury before her recent installation as the Anglican church’s first female archbishop. Hopefully she had some entertaining moments amid the serious intent of her journey, but it’s doubtful she had quite the rumbustious time that Chaucer’s pilgrims enjoyed…
POETRY gigs attract big audiences these days, and Devon’s Villages in Action has two exciting events, at Seaton on Friday 10th April and Axminster on Friday 17th. Irish comedian and former Bard of Exeter, Edward Tripp (pictured) comes to The Old Picture House at Seaton with No Man is an Ireland, a surreal, genre-bending, stand-up…
LAST year, the multi-award-winning film actor Gary Oldman returned to the stage, to the York theatre where he made his acting debut to perform Samuel Beckett’s solo masterpiece Krapp’s Last Tape. This year he is back reprising the role in London. More locally, another veteran actor, David Westhead, takes on the challenge in a new…
CONCERTS in the West’s April series brings Ensemble Augelletti, specialists in the music of the 17th and 18th centuries, to Bridport Arts Centre for the usual coffee-time recital at 11.30am on Friday 10th April, with a 7.30pm concert at Ilminster Arts Centre, and Crewkerne Dance House on Saturday 11th at 7.30pm Founded in 2019, the…
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…
HUNGARIANS love music and the whirling rhythms and passionate fiddlers Budapest Cafe Orchestra, with the charismatic violinist Christian Garrick, is on tour this spring, with local gigs at Sturminster Newton Exchange on Thursday 16th April, Dorchester Corn Exchange on Friday 17th and the Mowlem theatre at Swanage on Saturday 18th. Founded in 2009 by Garrick,…
LIKE Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, who explained her origins as “I’spect I grow’d’, so Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s show has also grown. Written as a 15-minute pop cantata for Colet Court School in London, it developed into a full scale musical that has endeared itself to the public for more than 50…
THE first major revival of the musical version of Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman comes to Bristol Old Vic from 29th April to 16th May, and to Southampton’s Mayflower Theatre from 2nd to 6th June. Set in an Argentinian prison, Molina, imprisoned for his homosexuality, is put in a cell with political prisoner…