WHAT do you need for a terrific pantomime? There could be lots of answers but I suggest a strong and familiar story, lots of songs, colourful costumes and sets, an exuberant Dame, a witty knockabout, an attractive central couple and a really hissable villain. Perform it in what is probably the prettiest theatre in the…
IF you are holding out for a hero, you need go no further than Salisbury. The Playhouse’s Jack is everything you could want – handsome, brave and he sings like an angel (not surprising when you read that actor Sam Harrison is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music). Mind you, he doesn’t impress…
ON the day when the vainglorious buffoon Donald Trump “decided” that the right thing to do was to proclaim Jerusalem capital of Israel, it seemed ironic to listen to the closing song of Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent’s seventies Rock Nativity, with its message of hope and love and peace. The Romans had taken over…
THERE’S no hint of pantomime about the Bristol Old Vic offering this Christmas, but it’s a show that will stay in the memory and offer a sharp stab each time you think of the homeless and needy this festive season. It has been a tumultuous time for Emma Rice, one of the most controversial figures…
JUDGING from the response from the excited children half-sitting on cushions around the “stage” in the Lantern, Kid Carpet’s Snow Globe is a great success. With the audience on three sides, father and children’s entertainer Kit calls in all his musical and electronic gizmo talents to tell the story. Gary Barlow has hired Kit the…
IT’S a bit of a cliche, but the audiences at BOVTS performances really are seeing the stars of the future. And in Peter Leslie Wild’s 2017 Christmas production, Liyah Summers makes the always familiar Dorothy totally her own. She is simply sensational. She’s not the only one. This crop of students has already impressed itself…
EIGHT years ago the south west’s Great Dame, Steve Bennett, popped out of the Northcott Theatre at Exeter University (where he had held sway in his petticoats for 15 years) to do a bit of shopping. Well, you know what these women are! But, with a basket full of new comic goodies, he’s back in…
CAMBRIDGE audiences saw a new Beauty and the Beast last Christmas, and the production was so good that the company and the co-producers decided to take it out again. So this year the show is at the Tobacco Factory in Bedminster, Bristol, bringing inspired storytelling, atmospheric original music, broad comedy, pathos and a moral message…
FESTIVE family shows can come in all sorts of styles, but they really have only one essential – to entertain young audiences. And on that basis, the 2017/188 collaboration between Bumblefly and Forest Forge is a resounding triumph. Its first matinee, in a packed Greyfriars in Ringwood, had the tinies on cushions in the front…
IT is a truth universally acknowledged … One of the most famous opening lines in literature sets the tone for Jane Austen’s best loved and most frequently adapted novel, Pride and Prejudice. In a couple of lines of elegant, witty prose, Austen captures her themes of young men with money and time on their hands…