Alerting all dames – your time is nigh

NOVEMBER is here and the pantomime season is approaching fast. Theatres and arts centres around the country have announced their shows and their stars, hoping to ensure the bums-on-seats that ensure their financial viability for the rest of the year. Pantomime is a peculiarly British institution, rich in tradition and full of expectation for younger…

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Moviola in November

THE November choice from Moviola is dominated by the film Vindication Swim, based on a true story. There are also a number of screenings of the rockumentary Swede Caroline, filmed in Somerset, and of the documentary Wilding, inspired by Isabella Tree’s story of how she and her husband saved his family estate by turning to…

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Here we go with Dolly

A MUSICAL celebration of the music of the one-and-only Dolly Parton comes to Bath Theatre Royal from Tuesday 5th to Saturday 9th November. The cast of Here You Come Again includes Tricia Paoluccio, who co-wrote the show, as Dolly, and Steven Webb as Kevin. The show includes many of Dolly’s biggest hits – Jolene, I…

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Summer 1954, Bath Theatre Royal and touring

TERENCE Rattigan’s popularity and fame fell victim to the “big new thing” of the mid-50s – the Kitchen Sink Drama that flowed from the Royal Court Theatre in Chelsea. The time from Rattigan as the most highly paid screenwriter in the world to his relegation as “old hat” was brief, and his restoration has been…

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See how the Tudors lived

ONE of the most atmospheric and delightful Tudor manor houses in the area, Athelhampton, at Puddletown, hosts a week of events during half term on the theme of Tudor lives. From Monday 28th October to Friday 1st November, daily from 10am, visitors can get a taste of the sights, sounds and smells of Tudor life….

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Chew Valley hoard of Norman coins saved for the nation

AN unprecedented hoard of 2,584 silver coins from the time of the Norman Conquest, found by metal detectorists in the Chew Valley, has been saved for the nation, and will have a permanent home in the Museum of Somerset, after being exhibited at the British Museum and in museums across the country. The acquisition of…

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Play On!, Salisbury Playhouse and touring

BACK in 1996, theatre director and writer Sheldon Epps first had the idea of setting Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in the Swing-era Harlem of the 1940s – and a brilliant idea it was. With a book by Cheryl L West, and entirely using the music of Duke Ellington, the show cleverly tells the original story at…

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The Year Clock, Dorset Museum and Art Gallery

AN old man with a long straggly beard shuffles over the ancient mosaic floor, wearing an aged dressing gown and a floppy night cap. He sits at his desk and starts to dig into his long memory. He remembers the young boy with the long, thin fingers who was unsuited to the physically demanding farmwork…

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A commotion in the West

THE middle of the 16th century was a turbulent time – a fevered period in the bloody history of the Reformation in England. A new play, which gets its world premiere at Exeter Northcott Theatre on Tuesday 22nd and Wednesday 23rd October, looks at the dramatic events in Devon in February 1547, soon after the…

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A legendary Dame at Bath

DAME Sian Phillips comes to Bath Theatre Royal to star in one of Terence Rattigan’s one-act masterpieces, Table Number Seven, from Thursday 24th October to Saturday 2nd November. The 91 year old actress will also take part in an on-stage conversation with director Richard Digby-Day, at Bath’s Ustinov Studio, on Sunday 27th. Her co-star in…

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