IF there is one thing you won’t hear at the end of one of Steven Oxford’s baking courses at the historic family bakery near Sherborne, it is “We need more buns!” The five of us who enjoyed a baking day at Alweston before Christmas went home laden with enough mouth-watering baked goods to stock a…
THE Christmas revue show at Salisbury Playhouse’s Salberg Studio is an eagerly anticipated tradition, and this year the subject is money. With the increasing commercialisation of Christmas and the concentration on ever more expensive presents, it’s an apposite time to think about the spondulicks, and that’s just what director Gareth Machin and his quartet of…
AT this stage in the game season I have noticed it is definitely the keen beans, the obsessed and the hardy that do most of the shooting in Scotland. It is of course still incredibly beautiful up there and yes there should still be a good bag of game to be had – BUT it…
THE Russian fairy story of The Snow Maiden has been given a make-over by Butterfly Psyche, and the results are on the stage at the Rondo in Bath until Sunday 20th December. Set in the frozen north, it all starts as the spirits of the ancestors get together to talk about old times and tell…
ANGEL Exit is flying high this festive season with its first ever show for children, on in Poole until Christmas Eve. The Dorset-based theatre company that brought Moonfleet, The Secret Garden and The Ballad of Martha Brown to audiences across the region, has devised a delightful tale for the under eight age range and their…
FOREST Forge has built up a loyal and expectant audience around the region for its annual Christmas touring shows, and this year they are enjoying something a bit different. Dom Phillips, who has been tour manager and technician for many years, has been hiding his light under a bushel – and this year it’s time…
THERE has never been a more fun beanstalk to climb than that on stage at Bath’s Theatre Royal this Christmas. The show is full of energy and colour, song and dance, incorporating all the vital elements of a traditional pantomime but at the same time mixing in enough topical and local jokes and and recent…
DENISE Deegan’s pastiche of life in a private girls school in the 1920s has been a smash hit ever since it opened at the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton in 1983, and this year it has hardly been off the stage in our region. Dorset’s fourth production of the year, at the Shelley Theatre in Boscombe,…
IN late November I joined some 250 white-coated cheese assessors from across the globe, assembled at the NEC to officiate at the World Cheese Awards. Nigh on 3,000 cheeses, (2,727 to be exact) spread across 62 judging tables meant approximately 42 cheeses for each judging team to assess within two and a half hours. It’s…
THERE’S lots of gun toting yee-haas in Lucy Rivers’ Little Sure Shot, back at the egg at Bath Theatre Royal and on stage until Sunday 10th January. The action-packed story is beautifully told, weaving information about the lives of the Pioneers into songs, adventures and the true story of Annie Oakley, sharp-shooter of the old…