WHEN Stephen Moffatt’s play The Unfriend opened at Chichester’s Minerva Studio in 2019, Joe Biden was the US President and Trump was a ghastly memory, subject of conversations on cruise liners between Peter and Debbie, British parents of teenage children, and Elsa, a charismatic Coloradan with a rather peculiar past. Mark Gatiss made his stage…
PERFORMANCE poet Luke Wright has taken his own story of adoption and turned it into a show that is part stand-up and part poetry. Later Life Letter, an evening of warm and honest thoughts, with poems, jokes and some music, returns to the south west from 23rd April to 25th April. Luke shares the story…
A PLAY that began as a 20-minute short has been developed into a full-length solo show, which Dorsetborn is premiering at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre on Wednesday and Thursday 15th and 16th April. Described as a romcom-thriller, Lessons from Teacher x explores love, suspicion and the warring roles we play in adult life. Cam is…
THE indisputable star of MPO Musical Theatre’s production of Betty Blue Eyes at Milborne Port village hall is Betty herself – and that’s just as it should be. There is a great song entitled Steal the Pig in Stiles and Drewe’s musical version of Alan Bennett’s 1984 film A Private Function, and the endlessly inventive…
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 Liv Torc to The Tiffin Box in Axminster on Friday 17th April. Liv will explore life, love and relationships, in Wild Words for Wet Days. The performance will make you laugh, move you and hopefully inspire you to reconsider our relationship to the…
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…