FIRST things first – this was an outstanding show, with a level of consistent excellence in acting, singing, playing, directing and the design elements that one finds once rarely in any theatre, let alone on the amateur stage. Milborne Port Opera should be thanked and congratulated. Steven Sondheim’s 1980s musical ‘Into the Woods’ is a fascinating…
MOLIERE’S comedy Tartuffe, a savage satire on the hypocrisy of France in 1664, has been successfully updated many times over the years – it’s always relevant as are all classic plays. It has been chosen by Andrew Hilton as his final show as artistic director of Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, the company he founded…
MANY people will know this play, one of Willy Russell’s most famous works, along with Educating Rita and Blood Brothers, from the film starring Pauline Collins. Collins played the title role in London’s West End when it opened there in 1988, directed by Simon Callow. Two years earlier the Artistic Director of the Liverpool Everyman,…
Shaftesbury-born private chef Philippa Davis is back on her travels, most recently in Ireland. She cooked some delicious food – and she explains why she strays occasionally from strictly following recipes. MY latest job was a fast, furious and fun weekend. Having flown across the Irish sea I headed down to County Carlow. I was…
THE geese are busy laying at the Traditional Free Range Egg Company, so directors Dan and Briony Wood have teamed up with local award-winning chef Brett Sutton to offer some great ideas to their customers. To celebrate the start of the new goose egg season, Brett , chef-proprietor of The White Post in Rimpton, has…
DAPHNE du Maurier’s novel My Cousin Rachel, published 66 years ago, is a REAL murder mystery … not a whodunit but posing a “did they do it” question that is never answered. It is the perfect story for a stage adaptation, and Diana Morgan’s version is the one chosen by Salisbury’s Studio Theatre for the…
STEPHEN Sondheim’s timelessly brilliant Into the Woods, interweaves various fairy tales into a spectacular story that goes on to delve into the psyches of the participants and follow them into the next stages of their lives. It sets substantial challenges for musicians, singers, dancers and actors, not to mention set, costume and lighting designers. So…
ONE hundred years on from the Great War, the echoes of military conflict resound across Salisbury Plain, where the Army still holds around half of the 300 square miles as training grounds. The prolific and prodigiously talented Barney Norris, a Salisbury boy who writes plays and novels, teaches and co-runs a theatre company, has turned…
ABI Morgan’s play Lovesong, given its Dorset premiere by APS at Sherborne, is a poignant and clever example of why she is one of the most in-demand writers of the 21st century. She wrote Lovesong at the same time her television series The Hour was on screen, and just before scripting The Iron Lady for…
‘I TALK to the birds,” sings the eccentric Dr Doolittle – and in truth, many of us do. We talk to the cheeky robin who sits on the wall as we dig the vegetable patch and the blackbird who watches for the worms. But Beth really talks to the bird who comes to live in…