THE universal agreement that Shakespeare’s themes are timeless has been interpreted as carte blanche for modernisations and period swaps, but it’s perhaps never been more effectively done than in the current Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory production, on stage at the Ustinov Studio in Bath until 21st July. The company, started by Andrew Hilton in…
HANDEL’S opera Partenope, first seen in 1730 and written in English, is one of the barmiest of the 55 he wrote, but perhaps ideal for the “me too” year. Performed by Iford Opera accompanied by Contraband, under the direction of Christopher Bucknall, it’s the story of the powerful and adventurous queen of Naples and her…
THE casting of Jamie Beddard, an actor who suffers from cerebral palsy, in the role of John Merrick The Elephant Man, has rather tended to overshadow this production of Bernard Pomerace’s stage interpretation of the tragic life of a man whose severe facial and body deformities made him a social outcast. A severe critic of…
JUST as the temperatures soar and the Engerland team is still in the world cup, pubs are running out of beer – so audiences as the touring production of Whisky Galore will understand even more keenly the anguish felt by Todday islanders when the whisky ran out in 1941. It was at that time that…
Submitted review by Harriet Still SONGS and stories of migration echoed around the Georgian courtroom of Shire Hall Historic Courthouse Museum in Matthew Crampton and Jeff Warner’s show, Human Cargo. The two folk performers used humour, poignancy and hard-hitting facts to tell the tales of individuals who have moved across continents. The thought-provoking stories…
THEBES is emerging from a long civil war, ten years of unspeakable brutalities, particularly against children and women. Think Bosnia, Congo, Sudan. Years of massacres, starvation, the total breakdown of civil society. Now there is a fledgling government, led by a small group of brave women – widows, women who have survived rape, watched their…
JOHN Crabtree took on the task not only of directing and designing the first public production in Amateur Players of Sherborne’s new Studio Theatre in Marston Road, but also taking one of the least enviable roles in the play, that of the tyrannical father Egeus. He didn’t want a flimsy, whimsical take on Shakespeare’s story,…
SASHA Regan’s version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe is quintessentially English fun, expanding the original wit and energy into the 21st century. First seen in London in 2010, it starts as a group of excited young men find themselves in an old theatre, clamber onto the darkened stage, and get lost in the history of…
PURBECK is becoming a hot spot for outstanding chamber music and vocal ensembles, with Purbeck Chamber Music Festival in the late summer, and the exciting series of concerts during Purbeck Art Weeks in May and June. Some of the country’s leading classical musicians and singers, including cellist Natalie Clein, artistic director of the chamber music…
TONY and Gill Horitz, founders of the Wimborne-based State of Play, devised The Gathering from letters collected from local families. Performed to a packed audience in the north transept of Wimborne Minster, after its premiere at Holtwood Church earlier in the year, it tells the stories of two Dorset soldiers who died in the conflict. …