SIMON Dormandy’s adaptation of EM Forster’s A Passage to India is informed by his father’s experiences of the sub-continent, and the combination of mysticism and surreptitious violence are perfectly suited to Dormandy’s physical theatre style. In a simple8 and Royal and Derngate, Northampton co-production, this swirling, intense and colourful version distils the essence of the…
THE unfolding drama of the Scottish Play is the perfect vehicle for dance, as packed Merlin audiences discovered in Frome this week. The occasion – heralded as the arts event of the week in the national press – was the opening of Mark Bruce’s new dance theatre piece, Macbeth, based on the familiar Shakespearean story…
THE decision to opt for a play instead of a pantomime this year has brought one of the very best things I have ever seen to the Shaftesbury Arts Centre stage. Director Rosie King chose American playwright Ken Ludwig’s multi-layered, literate and darky exciting version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, often performed as a two…
TIME-travelling magicians and all round spiffing chaps Rhys Morgan and Robert West brought a magical extravaganza to Salisbury last night with a truly amazing show – as mind boggling as it was delightful. Celebrating their tenth year as a duo of deception, the intimacy of the Salberg Studio was the perfect venue for their brand…
THE versatile Swan Theatre company in Yeovil took a step into the unknown for their first show of 2018 – the first play written by local stalwart am dram soc member Adrian Harding, directed by fledgling director Judith Baker, with new members making their stage debuts. And it is a huge success. Whistleblower is set…
IN the first few days of 2014 , the eyes of the world focussed on North Somerset, where a number of remote villages were being engulfed by the rising water from the River Parrett and its tributaries and the courses that feed and underlie the Levels. Photographs and news footage of the floods brought aid…
IN 1977, folk singer Pete Bellamy, then a member of The Young Tradition, composed a cycle of folk ballads based on a true story of two petty criminals transported from Norwich Gaol to Botany Bay. It became The Transports, heralded as the first folk opera (presumably leaving The Beggar’s Opera aside) and the recording was and…
DO you remember the film The Vikings, starring a hyper-butch Kirk Douglas as the Viking leader and the gorgeous Tony Curtis as the scantily clad hero? OK, you’re showing your age – but you will remember the dramatic finale as Kirk Douglas’s character is sent off to the Norse after-life in traditional style, in a…
DISTINCTIVE patches of brown grass at Stonehenge stand out among the green fields but these areas will soon be richer in wild flowers, thanks to the addition of seeds collected from Salisbury Plain. It is more than 15 years since the start of one of Europe’s largest grassland restoration projects in the Stonehenge landscape. National…
WHAT would you do if you were given a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease? Be frightened … depressed … angry? Actress Sue Wylie was all of these – but after meeting an unusual young man who released his tensions with free-running, she turned her diagnosis into a play and now a film which is by turns…