ALFRED Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2017, and what better way to mark its timeless relevance than a new production starring one of our greatest actresses, Sian Phillips. This Bath Theatre Royal production starts on the home stage, the first of an eight venue UK tour, teaming the octogenarian Dame with Derek…
THE Autumn season at Salisbury Playhouse starts with Jo Newman’s production of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, which still has the aura of a very modern play although it was first seen in 1978. It has generated acres of words from the (predominantly male) critics and academics, and great public interest when Joan Bakewell, whose affair with…
THREE South Somerset market towns will benefit from a new grants programme launched by South Somerset District Council this September. The aim of the grants is to increase the number of visitors to Chard, Crewkerne and Ilminster. Not for profit groups and organisations based in the three towns are invited to apply for grants to…
ONE Carthy is always going to be a delight, an evening of virtuoso musicianship and erudition worn lightly, with a satisfying mix of traditional and new folk music. Two Carthys is double the delight and then some. Martin and Eliza Carthy have been sharing stages across Britain for decades, often with Martin’s wife and Eliza’s…
SHAKESPEARE’S late play The Winter’s Tale is one of his least known, and calls for major suspension of disbelief in this magic-realist plot that combines the conventions of Renaissance and Classical cultures in almost equal measure. There are two royal courts, a rural idyll, barren seashores and even a bear. And there’s an argument that…
MORE and more people are choosing to stay in Britain for their holidays – it’s partly the insecurity of the pound, something to do with the frustrations and delays of air travel and perhaps also an awareness that this is a very beautiful country and we all ought to know it better! Whatever the reasons, a…
WASHINGTON Irving’s classic ghost story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is a perfect vehicle for a youth theatre project, and so Miriam Battye’s new adaptation, celebrating 30 years of Bath youth drama, was an appetising prospect. Directed by John East, for the second year in the intimate confines of the egg (the youth theatre space…
LES Miserables is truly a phenomenon – no other musical has run for as long in London, since 1985, or been revived so soon (twice) on Broadway, and with a school edition available since 2001 and the film version hitting screens a few years ago even more people have seen this show. This week it…
THERE is more to Alan Bennett’s Miss Shepherd than the Dowager Countess of Grantham losing her money and her marbles, and marvellously funny though Maggie Smith’s film performance was, the enduring appeal of The Lady in the Van depends on a multi-faceted understanding of the Lady and her reluctant host, the playwright himself. Bennett’s 1999…
GARETH Armstrong’s Fondly Remembered premiered just two years ago in London and only became available for amateur performance a few months ago, so Halse have been (not uncharacteristically) quick off the mark in obtaining the rights. Four former colleagues, all theatricals (extremely so in some cases) meet to arrange the memorial service of a recently deceased,…