WHAT a treat to see the person that Andrew Lloyd Webber chose to help workshop the material for this show over 25 years ago finally back in the leading role. It may have taken a few years for Ria Jones to play the part of Norma Desmond, but after showing just how good she was…
DISCOVER the story of one of the world’s great cheeses, when Devon-based Quicke’s opens its doors for a series of tours, monthly from April to September, at the farm that the Quicke family has nurtured for 14 generations. The tours will tell the often surprising story of what goes into a wedge, from the specially…
PHILIPPA Davis, the Shaftesbury-based private chef, is passionate about the food that is grown, produced and cooked in the various parts of the world that she visits. Towards the end of 2017, she was in Italy, and visited the San Miniato Truffle Festival as well as Pisa and Florence … “Darling, I am taking you…
WHEN she isn’t cooking for clients as far apart as the extreme north of Scotland and Singapore, Boston and Provence, Shaftesbury-based private chef Philippa Davis writes a regular column for The Field magazine and is constantly exploring new tastes and new products. Her travels may take her around the world, but her heart is firmly in…
IF you think Austrian cakes are just about Viennoiserie (which, frankly, can be pretty boring), you haven’t been to some of the country’s great old coffee houses, particularly in Salzburg or Innsbruck – Esterhazyschnitt, Cremeschnitte, Kaisertorte, Linzertorte, Nusstorte … the litany of names is as mellifluous as the cakes are delicious. We spent a few…
HOW do you refresh one of the best-known and oldest of all pantomime stories while still sticking closely to the traditional tale? Matthew Maisey, back once again as the writer and director of Street’s panto at Strode Theatre, has plenty of ace ideas up his sleeve. For the audience at the first performance, one of…
THE traditional antidote to the joy and happiness of Christmas is a good old ghost story, perhaps some MR James, or a little Gothic Poe, or even some Dickens, so it seems highly appropriate for Helen Watts to bring her directorial talent to a more recent work, the thriller Stone Cold Murder, by James Cawood,…
ARTS University Bournemouth is setting new – and enviably high – standards in collaboration between acting and design courses. And nowhere has it been better shown than in the pre-Christmas production of Laura Wade’s Alice, a thoughtful and interesting new version of Alice in Wonderland that incorporates elements of The Wizard of Oz and applies…
DISNEY might have been the original inspiration for Bea Roberts’ new version of Little Mermaid. But the mesmerising show this Christmas at the egg, Bath Theatre Royal’s dedicated children’s performance space, is a world away from the sentimental blockbuster. The award-winning playwright has incorporated the story of the Selkie and the legend of the Mermaid…
THERE are few things that are more quintessentially British than The Christmas Pantomime. You only have to sit next to an American or mainland European in an audience and you quickly realise just how unique panto is, no matter how much the Italians might claim it as the child of commedia dell’arte! From those earliest…