SINCE its foundation in 1932, when the initial production, Cox and Box and Pirates of Penzance, cost £300 to produce, BLOC, the only non-professional company to stage an annual musical production at the Bristol Hippodrome, has survived seeing its venue, the Victoria Rooms, burnt down six weeks before opening night, a World War, their theatrical…
BATH-based poet and storyteller Toby Thompson “comes home” to perform his solo show, I Wish I Was a Mountain, on stage at the egg at the Theatre Royal until 30th September. Twenty-four year old Toby worked Front of House at the egg for ten years, so he says it’s like his second home, where director…
JOE Simpson’s account of his epic battle to get back to base camp after breaking a leg during the decent of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes is a real “page turner”. Many readers have found themselves burning the midnight oil because they could not put the book down. There is also plenty of tension…
WITH acting nobility, the latest hit French writer and the best translator in the business, there are plenty of reasons to head to Bath this week before The Height of the Storm blasts into the West End on 2nd October. Brazil is my favourite film, and Jonathan Pryce was already a star when he was…
HAVING studied The Tempest for A Level 40 years ago, won a medal at the Bournemouth Festival for reciting Prospero’s valedictory speech, seen the play more than ten times since and followed the derivatory Return to the Forbidden Planet around the country when a friend was in the cast, I come to my favourite local theatre…
IF you can make it to Tiverton by the end of this week, by car, train or helicopter, for heaven’s sake do so or you will miss a treat. One of the great mysteries of modern musical theatre is the lack of recognition granted to the (arguably) best and (by a distance) wittiest musical ever…
GOD of Carnage was the second play by Yasmina Reza to win the Olivier Award for Best Comedy. Her first, Art, is probably my favourite play. In eighty minutes French author Reza manages to encapsulate the spirit of friendship, particularly male friendship, and everything it represents. Having seen Art more times than any other play,…
GOD of Carnage, was the second play by Yasmina Reza to win the Olivier Award for Best Comedy. Her first, Art, is probably my favourite play. In eighty minutes French author Reza manages to encapsulate the spirit of friendship, particularly male friendship, and everything it represents. Having seen Art more times than any other play,…
THE original Pelléas Ensemble programme had to be amended at fairly short notice owing to the harpist, Oliver Wass, being indisposed with a broken thumb. The challenge was to find fellow musicians who were free for a three-day tour for Concerts in the West and who were able to put together a programme of music…
THE simmering, seething row about anti-semitism in the Labour party and the recent Novichok poisonings in Salisbury added to the intensity of PUSH, Howard Moody’s opera based on the true story of a Belgian Jew, Simon Gronowski, whose mother pushed him off a train to Auschwitz and thus saved his life. Anti-Jewish feelings and Cold…