BATH is a beautiful city, delightful at any time of year, but late autumn brings one of its special treats, the annual Mozartfest. This year, running from 7th to 15th November, to brings outstanding musicians, including the Carducci, Consone, Castalian and Schumann string quartets, acclaimed soloists Imogen Cooper, Cedric Tiberghien and Jennifer Pike, and larger…
THERE is no question that Venice makes an indelible impression, and that mixture of enchantment, beauty and menace was never better captured than by Nic Roeg’s 1973 masterpiece Don’t Look Now, with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland at its heart. In 2007 playwright Nell Leyshon created a stage adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier short…
SOMERSET’S world famous Guy Fawkes Carnival circuit is under way, with its first outing on Saturday 1st November at Bridgwater. The spectacular, colourful, noisy and inventive carts are devised and built over 11 months of the year, ready to be unveiled to their astonished and delighted audiences filling the streets of the eight towns, this…
NOTHING explores the depths of emotion and drama like a great movie melodrama, and a new season of films at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre, starting on 4th November, sets out to celebrate the genre with a programme that ranges from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? to Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet. The BFI Film Audience…
UNTIL a few months ago, the names of Moth and Raynor Winn provoked respect and admiration, and the their story was filmed as The Salt Path, with a stellar cast featuring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. That critically-praised film is the most-requested on Moviola’s November programme. In July, The Observer newspaper broke the story which…
BATH Theatre Royal hosts two double bills of opera and dance, featuring English Touring Opera and Rambert, from 3rd to 8th November, beginning on Monday 3rd with Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, an acclaimed production, directed by Robin Norton-Hale, which was awarded four star reviews in The Stage and The Times. In ancient Rome,…
THE recent media circus and general clamour around the former prince Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, the younger brother of King Charles III, is by no means the first time that the future of the monarchy has been in question. A new play by Gavin Egan, at Dorchester Arts on Tuesday 4th November, looks at the fate…
MATINEE audiences can be tricky – there are some wonderful stories about remarks made by elderly ladies at matinee performances of Waiting for Godot. The principally late-middle-aged audience that filled Bristol Old Vic to watch this beautifully staged 1930s-style production, were definitely not a great asset to the cast, with their muted and slow reactions…
A FAVOURITE saying of my father, when he had just driven a nice new, but underpowered car was “Lovely bodywork and interior, but couldn’t pull your cap off your head”. It is nowhere as drastic as that, but in many ways, under Loveday Ingram’s carefully structured direction, Ann-Marie Casey’s stage adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s…
PUCCINI’S Madama Butterfly, one of the great staples of romantic opera, is so well known for its earworm Humming Chorus and its aria Un bel di (One Fine Day is a highpoint in every soprano’s repertoire), that you sometimes don’t remember what the story really says about American imperialism and the very different religious and…