THE stage is set with piles of books, on the floor and suspended from the “ceiling” and they are the only props in this inventive telling of Trollope’s novel Lady Anna and how it came to be written on board the SS Great Britain en route from Liverpool to Australia. Anthony Trollope’s anniversary in 2015…
SOMETHING Underground Theatre Company was founded by writer/director Jonathan Brown in 2006. The company’s work tends to be visceral and uncompromising, and this, Brown’s latest play, is no exception. A Good Jew was never going to be an easy evening’s entertainment, but little did we know just how riveting and disturbing a piece of theatre…
GRADUATING students from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School have moved into the Tobacco Factory, transforming its open space to provide an authentically intimate look into London theatre in the 1660s, when women were first legally permitted to perform on stage. April de Angelis’ funny, haunting and moving play chronicles the lives of the early “playhouse…
A NEW cocktail from Blackacre Farm Eggs combines Dorset’s own gin, a sparkling wine from Lyme Bay and the white of one of Blackacre’s eggs to create a very British take on a French classic. Combining outstanding local produce and punchy summer flavours in equal measure, the South West 75 should prove a hit with…
CHIMPANZEES, trees and a flying trapeze are surely three of the silliest, yet best-known rhymes in recent musical theatre. They have even led to an amusing game with one of my friends, as we create new variants, each ending with “Tell me on a Sunday, please”. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black’s one act, one…
IFORD Festival, in the beautiful Harold Peto designed grounds of Iford Manor near Bradford-on-Avon, has been offering picnics to its patrons for several years, and we enjoyed our first at the opening night of Macbeth this year. Ever since I first visited the festival I have been enthusing about its setting and unique atmosphere, and…
IN an effort to scupper the reputation of opera as an elitist artform, recent productions have moved towards The Big Idea, in which directors impose their often peculiar interpretations on classic works. This is supposed to attract new and younger audiences. Here in the south west, audiences are lucky enough to have the most beautiful and…
MOST of us would recognizes a Chagall painting, with its vibrant and unexpected coleurs and its flying people, but the story of the passionate Russian artist is less familiar. The perfect subject for a Kneehigh work, thought Exeter playwright Daniel Jamieson. And so The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk was born, to provide the finale for…
MICHAEL Frayn’s classic fly-on-the-wall farce Noises Off is the story of a third rate theatre company performing a fourth rate farce, Nothing On, on a regional UK tour. For anyone who remembers such tours, the humour is heightened, but this is a play for all audiences, a riot of dumb show and luvviedom, pratfalls and…
BURGERS are not just for carnivores – and students on Christine McFadden’s Burger Special day will discover just what an exciting variety of ingredients and flavours you can enjoy in a vegetarian patty. The course at the cookery school which Christine (aka The Dorset Foodie) runs at her home in picturesque Little Bredy, is on…