Kamila Bydlowska violin, Shiry Rashkovsky viola, Timothée Botbol cello; performances in Lower Pulworthy, Hatherleigh; Bridport Arts Centre; Ilminster Arts Centre Ilminster and The Dance House, Crewkerne THE wonder of the violin, viola and cello trio is the immense possibilities that it holds for compositional creativity and listener response. The range of pitch, tone-colours and texture…
WHEN you think of Oscar Wilde as a playwright you instantly smile – all those dazzling one-liners! But there is equal delight in his exquisite satirical portraits of stuffy aristocrats heading inexorably towards a time of change like the Titanic to the iceberg. An Ideal Husband (1895) is a dramatic comedy which revolves around an…
Brahms: Variations on a Theme by Haydn Hindemith: Clarinet Concerto Weber: Concertino Schumann: Symphony No. 4 Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Amyn Merchant Kirill Karabits: Conductor Andreas Ottensamer: Clarinet The BSO’s Artist-in-Residence scheme has added a level of interest and excitement to their programming over the last few years. Two years ago, the Korean pianist Sunwook…
TO have one Strictly Come Dancing champion starring in a musical tour may be regarded as fortunate, but to have two … well, you get the idea. When this production started life as the latest actor-musician show at the tiny powerhouse that is the Watermill Theatre, Newbury last Summer, Tom Chambers was the star. Now…
DOLLY Parton’s musical version of the hit film 9 to 5 could hardly be more timely than in the week of Weinstein in the tenure of Trump – I dare you to say that shows about sexist, bullying, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigots are dated! The film was released in 1980, and the story was re-imagined for…
IT isn’t easy to take a play that everyone knows backwards and do something different with it, but director Beth Archer has succeeded with her production of Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece at Shaftesbury Arts Centre, until 14th October. When Wilde wrote The Importance of Being Earnest, coming from an Anglo-Irish background very different from the aristocratic…
THERE has never been a time when the eyes of the world have been so focussed on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, so a revival of Gore Vidal’s play The Best Man could not be more relevant. Bill Kenwright’s new production, starring Martin Shaw as the would-be president of the United States and Jack Shepherd as the…
HOWARD Coggins and Stu McLoughlin, aka Living Spit, are a force to be reckoned with. This Bristol based comedy duo are simply hilarious; their Six Wives of Henry VIII, described as a tragically hysterical history, is just about the daftest, cleverest show I have seen all year. They have clearly built up quite a following…
LAST night’s performance of Kenneth Grahame’s delightful classic The Wind in the Willows was quite unlike any version of the story I had seen or heard before. Completely capturing the innocence of the original, this was a purely musical adaptation of Grahame’s book using traditional English folk melodies – some well-known, others less so –…
IN September 1941 the German army laid siege to Leningrad, and the blockade lasted until January 1944 – the longest and most destructive siege in history. It is thought that more than one and half million people died during the 872 day blockade. Half a million children were evacuated. The Leningrad Radio Orchestra continued to…