Bizet: Symphony in C Messiaen: Turangalîla Symphony Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Amyn Merchant Kirill Karabits: Conductor Steven Osborne: Piano Cynthia Millar: Ondes Martinot The BSO is 125 years old this year, but it’s showing no signs at all of senile decay. This was an ambitious start to what promises to be another outstanding season at…
GRAHAM Harvey is best known as the agricultural story editor of The Archers – but he is so much more than a contributor to the world’s longest running radio soap opera. The clue is in the word “agricultural” because Harvey is passionate and knowledgeable about farming – real farming, farming that cares about the soil,…
THIS is one of those “clever trick” plays which make up an ever-increasing part of Alan Ayckbourn’s work. There are plays that run concurrently on two stages, plays set on three different floors, all staged at the same level, plays that move forward and backward in time, and so on. The clever trick in this…
OPERA Project returned to Bristol’s Tobacco Factory earlier this week with its staging, in English, of one the most powerful works in the repertoire – Tosca. Following the company’s hugely successful production of that other Puccini favourite Madam Butterfly in 2014, this co-production with the venue is both gripping and compelling, the familiar if complex…
RUTH Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK, and Marilyn Monroe, died a decade apart. One became a cause celebre in her final weeks, the other was a celebrity in her life. Both were bottle blondes. Actress Joan Ellis (no relation) imagined the last moments of both women for her solo show…
IT Shoulda Been You, a new(ish) musical comedy by Barbara Anselmi and Brian Hargrove, is currently enjoying what could well be its English premiere in the intimate setting of Cooper Hall, Frome. Originally performed on Broadway in 2015, where it was nominated for no fewer than twelve awards, this production was very nearly a UK…
ARTHUR Miller wrote his epic play The Crucible in response to the McCarthy witch hunts of the early 1950s, underlining the mass hysteria and paranoia that can overtake the American people. The play is particularly relevant today, in a US society increasingly polarised by suspicion, innuendo and “fake news”. Lois Harbinson’s production the play for…
CAN it really be 34 years since I saw Felicity Kendal and Roger Rees in this play? My old programme assures me that it was, at the Strand Theatre. I remember there being four characters in it, and it mainly about two couples and their relationships, including some clever trickery with a play within a…
EVERY time I return to this auditorium built into the side of a hill in Yeovil I prepare myself to be disappointed. I have enjoyed every production I have ever seen there, even of plays I do not like, so sensitive and detailed is the work by the actors, directors and crew. I will no…
Ensemble Askew Emily Askew, John Dipper, Jamie Roberts and Simon Whittaker 7-9 September 2017 The latest CD album, Alchemy, from Emily Askew and her band of early music musicians was recently reviewed in The Times as “unpredictable, impassioned and one of the albums of the year so far”. Hearing the CD programme live over their…