THOSE “plays that go wrong” are now big TV as well as stage hits, but David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin Jnr have been doing it for decades with the Farndale series. The current show at the Swan in Yeovil, Murder at Check­mate Manor, is a perfect spoof on the country house murder mystery, and like…

TENNESSEE Williams’ 1947 play A Street­car Named Desire is set in one of New Orleans’ many run-down housing districts, where Stella DuBois and her husband Stanley Kowalski rent a cramped apartment from its owner, who lives upstairs. The action starts when older sister Blanche turns up in New Orleans, travelling on the streetcar whose destination…

JEREMY Secker’s adaptation of Geoffrey Chau­cer’s Canterbury Tales was written in 1978 for The Hertfordshire Players to perform at The Minack in Cornwall. Now this delightful modern version has been chosen by Taunton Thespians for the 2017 summer tour. Mr Secker’s  version, which adheres to the verse format of the original, was created for performance…

THE First World War changed almost everything for ordinary people across northern Europe and the other countries drawn into the conflict. In Britain, the changes entered every corner of the country, from the tiniest village in south west England to the furthest north of Scotland. Factories were converted from peace-time production to munitions. A generation…

ALAN Bennett’s triumphant adaptation of Kenneth Graham’s classic children’s book The Wind in the Willows provides a perfect platform for actors of all ages to show off their skills – and that’s certainly what they’re doing in Shaftesbury this summer. Barbara Arnold’s cast is full of familiar faces and (mostly) youthful newcomers, all of them…

JOHN Betjeman, who dropped the second “n” at the end of his name to avoid being ridiculed at school as a German, was probably England’s first “national treasure.” His poems, rhyming without triteness, have immortalised railway stations, village names, afternoon tea and of course Miss Joan Hunter Dunn. And, as we learn at Bath this…

THE Regina Monologues, the brilliant short play by Rebecca Russell and Jenny Wafer, was first seen in Edinburgh in 2006, and now fortunate audiences at Frome’s Silk Mill have a chance to discover it. It helps to have a passing acquaintance with the history of Henry VIII and his six wives, whose lives have been…

I HAVE never been to a community play as involving and passionately felt as is Monmouth, The West Country Rebellion, on at Lyme Regis until 16th July. Inspired by the success of 2016’s production of The Tempest of Lyme, Marine Theatre artistic director Clemmie Reynolds and writer Andrew Rattenbury teamed up again to create a play about…