WHEN I was a child, plastic was an exciting product and new things were being made all the time. Our class at school did a (probably cringe-making) variety show which included the twin daughters of the Fawley Esso oil refinery dancing in brightly coloured plastic clothes. A few years later, my father had his first…
BRANDON Thomas’s comedy Charley’s Aunt opened in 1892, just three years before Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Both have redoubtable aunts. Both have central characters in love. And both have continued to be popular with audiences and performers ever since. Salisbury’s Studio Theatre company has chosen Thomas’s play to open its autumn season, directed by…
AN old man thinks of what might have been, regrets what has been. A pretty young actress dreams of success, fame and a career in the theatre far from her dull rural home. A second wife frets, disappointed, ailing, jealous, frustrated. Outside it is bitterly cold. The characters of A Pure Woman could have walked…
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,…