WE are accustomed to murder mysteries where all the characters have motives for murder, but Rick Abbot’s play But Why Bump Off Barnaby?, chosen by Mere Amateur Drama Society for the next production, comes at the dastardly deed from a different angle. When Barnaby Folcey is murdered at the Marlgate Manor family gathering, it really is…
DORCHESTER Drama tackles one of the masterpieces of the great Norwegian dramatist, Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People, updated and reimagined from 1882 to 2009. The group’s autumn production is at the Corn Exchange on Friday 20th and Saturday 21st November at 2.30pm and 7.30pm. The performers are having fun with the generally serious…
HERE are 36 productions featuring 24 traditional pantomimes and Christmas stories on offer in the south and west region this year, and the first one, Arthur, starts at Bath’s Egg on 19th November and runs to 3rd January. Again the line-up is a mixture of the familiar and the new, with several book and film…
THE country’s favourite poet, Pam Ayres, comes to Weston super Mare Playhouse on Sunday 21st November, with her latest collection, Doggedly Onwards – a Life in Poems. From an appearance on the television talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1975 to performing before the late Queen Elizabeth II, Pam Ayres has become a genuine national treasure,…
A REVIVAL of TS Eliot’s theatrical masterpiece, Murder in the Cathedral, has attracted rave reviews – the Evening Standard described the production as magnificent and star Sir David Suchet’s performance as “spell-binding”, and the Daily Mail called it “hugely impressive”. The Orange Tree Theatre production at St John the Divine Church in Richmond is coming…
STU McLoughlin wasn’t the one who was the Living Spit of Henry VIII – that was his co-founder the late Howard Coggins. And Stu isn’t the average idea of Shakespearean hero Hamlet either, though an average is difficult to envision. But nothing ventured, he thought, and finding an obscure reference to an eggshell in Act 4…
IT could be the slogan of any local newspaper or website, but “Every story matters” is also part of the subtitle of a Dorset-set novel by the journalist Margery Hookings – Plashy Fen: In a Place This Small, Every Story Matters. Set in a fictional coastal West Dorset village, this is an affectionate and beautifully…
THOSE of us who live in Dorset and Somerset are so lucky. Not only do we live in one of the most beautiful areas of the country – relatively unspoiled, too – but we live in part of the richest food regions. The south west is justly famed for its traditional local produce – apples,…
“BEECH leaves, that yellow the noon-time, Float past like specks in the eye; I set every tree in my June time, And now they obscure the sky …” … wrote Thomas Hardy in his poem, Beech Leaves. Join folk singers and actors Tim Laycock and Alastair Braidwood at Dorchester Corn Exchange on Sunday, 15th November,…
THE hugely popular Dorset folk duo Ninebarrow have a gig with Dorchester Arts at Thomas Hardye School theatre, on Saturday 14th November. The show focuses on their recent studio album, The Hour of the Blackbird, a collection of beautiful original songs. Ninebarrow – Jon Whitley and Jay La Bouchardiere – consistently delight audiences across the…