HAD Sir William Schwenck Gilbert been alive today, I would take money on his including the latest and plupenultimate president of the United States and his South African top-line-of-keyboard-iconic tech bro sidekick, as well as those for whom personal pronouns are more important than personal relationships, in his brilliant patter songs … so thank goodness…
WHAT do you do if you inherit a traditional shoe factory that is about to be swamped by cheap overseas imports. If your name is Clark, you convert the main factory site into a shopping village and introduce a smaller range of specialist shoes. Kinky Boots, for all its flamboyant story and big scale musical…
ANTHONY Shaffer’s edge-of-your-seat thriller Sleuth comes to the Swan Theatre in Yeovil from 19th to 24th May. Some may remember the 1972 movie, now a classic of its genre, which was filmed at Athelhampton. The Sway production is directed by Sarah Ambrose, it has Robert Graydon as Andrew Wyke and Chris Williamson as Milo Tindle,…
HOW do you set about reviewing a play? That’s a question that lots of people ask, and the answer is complicated. For anyone who has been doing it as long as I have, it is a combination of experience, knowledge of the work, previous productions and performances, the effect THIS production has on THIS audience…
HILARY Tones takes the lead in her own play, C’Est La Vie, Sarah Bernhardt and Me, at Bath Theatre Royal’s Ustinov Studio on Tuesday 27th and Wednesday 28th May. The play tells the story of the celebrated and pioneering 19th century French actress who performed worldwide, becoming the first global superstar. An actress nervously awaits…
WHEN we were young, salt came in an instantly recognisable tin, with a cute little pouring “beak” and a drawing of a child chasing a chicken and pouring salt on it. Nowadays, a tin like the one illustrated here is a collector’s item! Salt has been an essential in the human diet since the earliest…
MOST of us would agree that the idea of being buried alive is unspeakably terrifying. This is the starting point of a dark thriller, Die Before You Die, which is getting its second local screening at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre cinema on Tuesday 13th May, at 7.30pm, followed by a Q&A session with the director…
POOLE At Dunkirk, a community exhibition that highlights the part local people played in the 1940 evacuation, is at the heart of the historic port’s VE Day commemorations, on at the gallery at the Lighthouse arts centre until Tuesday 27th May. Curated by Poole Maritime Trust with the support of a range of local organisations,…
HATED by academics, loved by children, Enid Blyton was a best-selling author whose works were excoriated by critics, banned by the BBC and hated by teachers and librarians. But what was she really like? Liz Grand portrays this controversial figure in The Secret Life of Enid Blyton, a play by Kit Hunter, coming to the…
MEET Percy, the very appealing star of his own show, coming to the Front Room at Weston-super-Mare on 17th May Percy is a puffling who loves his burrow a little too much. What he doesn’t realise, however, is that his entire flock are about to migrate south for the winter. If he doesn’t learn to…