DAISY Meredith has won the first scholarship to Grangewood School for Girls, the very first elementary schoolgirl to do so, and this does not go down well with some of the other girls. Denise Deegan’s witty pastiche on the books of Angela Brazil started life at the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton in 1983, before a…
THERE are few times when anyone can say they have seen two definitive productions of famous musicals within 19 days, but I am fortunate enough to have done so, and both of them thanks to people who live in Somerset. The first was the recent ground-breaking and site-specific Sweeney Todd, set in a rebuilt pie shop…
BATH audiences were delighted last night to have had the opportunity of seeing father and son James and Jack Fox in a brand new stage adaptation of Dear Lupin. The book on which it is based, Dear Lupin: Letters to a Wayward Son, was written by father and son Roger and Charlie Mortimer in 2012…
THE Sicilian Baroque masterpiece that is Ragusa Ibla would be a crowd-puller come what may – but its dusting of showbiz glamour means it packs a double-strength punch in the tourism stakes. Ibla, the smaller, older partner of Ragusa Superiore, has been the location for many films in recent years but is now most famous…
YOU might not think that a restaurant in a chain motel off the A303 would be a dining destination in itself, but a visit to the Solstice Bar and Grill at the Holiday Inn Express at Amesbury could change your mind. Around a million visitors head for nearby Stonehenge, one of the world’s truly iconic…
THE second offering in this year’s Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory season is Sheridan’s classic comedy The School for Scandal. Dominic Power has not only adapted the text but added a prologue and epilogue that underline the play’s contemporary relevance. It opens in a salon of gossip, so how much more appropriate could it be…
ARTHUR Miller’s play Death of a Salesman is regarded by many as the finest American play of the 20th century, and its central character Willy Loman as the greatest character in American theatre. Gregory Doran’s new production, on the main stage at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon (and transferring to the West End), underlines…
BASED on one of Agatha Christie’s most famous and enduring novels, published in 1939, this play was originally called Ten Little Niggers. By the time novel and play reached America the title had become Ten Little Indians, and at some point even this proved offensive to some, so the title was changed to the last…
ARTHUR Miller’s play The Crucible, written 62 years ago as a response to the anti-Communist McCarthy Witch Hunts, is as relevant and powerful today as it was then. When director Peter Kelly chose it for the Studio Theatre’s April play, and rehearsals began, he saw a news clip of terrorists demanding that hostages recite sacred…
WHAT a wealth of talent there is in Warminster, and how hard they work. It is less than a month since the Athenaeum Limelight Players staged a powerful, contemporary version of Macbeth, and this week that production’s Lady M, Tanya Stockting, is back at the theatre as musical director and pianist for the youth group,…