DEBORAH Gearing’s new play UpBeat, on the road with Forest Forge until 9th April, should be compulsory viewing for anyone interested in climate change, and for how “alternative” lifestyles become the obvious option for those who care about their environment. It that all sounds a bit heavy, it’s not meant to, although this musical three-hander…
RICHARD Bean, creator of One Man Two Guv’nors, started his playwriting career with Toast, an imagined night shift at a Hull bread factory where he worked as a teenager. And a revival of the London production is currently touring the UK, at Bath Theatre Royal until 12th March. Bean was only 18 when he joined…
AS part of the current Artsreach season, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary music ensemble Kokoro (a Japanese word meaning “heart”) has been touring the south and south west with a series of exhilarating programmes. Friday night at the village hall at Burton Bradstock was no exception, featuring music by three 20th century greats – Stravinsky,…
THE Trojan wars have provided material for countless dramas, epic poems and books. The characters are larger than life, heroic, mythical and unknowable. It is the task of the interpreter – author, playwright, director, actor and artist – to help us to understand them. In the performances of four young Bristol Old Vic Theatre School…
THE last few years have revealed to many of us that maths and science can be exciting, interesting, even fun. Marcus du Sautoy, Brian Cox and his sidekick Robin Ince and others have brought complex ideas into our homes through the power of radio and we love it. Similarly a new generation of illusionists and…
JOHN Nicholson and Javier Marzan, two thirds of anarchic comedic theatre troupe Peepolykus, have turned their attention to Flaubert’s great tragic novel Madame Bovary, but fight as they may against its gravitas, the story shines through. Directed by Gemma Bodinetz, this co-production by Liverpool Everyman, Northampton Royal and Derngate, Bristol Old Vic and Southampton Nuffield…
NAVIGATING airports at half term is a bit like playing a kids computer game, says the Dorset-born private chef Philippa Davis. The route from departures in one country to arrivals in another is pitted with challenges, obstacles and tasks to test your intuition and skill – and all has to be completed within a certain…
Chausson: Soir de fête De Falla: Nights in the Gardens of Spain Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande Suite Stravinsky: Suite: The Firebird (1919 version) Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Mark Derudder Fabien Gabel: Conductor Frank Braley: Piano ALL four works in this richly enjoyable and varied concert were first…
THE received wisdom in some theatrical circles is that everything has to be edgy and dangerous and shocking and NEW! This production is a very good reason why this is a shallow and doomed policy. Hobson’s Choice is a very good play. It is described as author Harold Brighouse’s masterpiece and that’s not hyperbole. It…
THERE are many reasons to honour someone in this country, from the battlefield to the classroom, and of course, on the stage, and in the old-fashioned decorous language of pomp and heraldry, “services to dance” sounds so reserved for what Matthew Bourne has achieved in the past thirty years, but that is the reason he…