TODAY, six days before Christmas, in the newspaper we like, is a photo of three hippotamuses digging into a big heap of Brussels sprouts. As festive photos go, this one is certainly different. The sprouts themselves, firm, bright green and obviously fresh, look tempting enough to a human, never mind a hippo, but I’m afraid…
TAKE more than forty songs, all linked to travel; methods, destinations, weather, emotions and feelings associated with it, four sublimely talented actor-musicians, the cream of Salisbury Playhouse’s creative team, including its Artistic Director and one of the performers, and the intimate ambience of the Salberg Studio, and I challenge anybody not to be delighted with…
CHEF Philippa Davies was back home in Dorset recently to prepare a special dinner Dorset Corset theatre company, run by her sister Helen Watts. The Pudding of Christmas Present… What better way to stir up the Christmas spirit than to invite the cast from theatre company Dorset Corset’s adaption of A Christmas Carol to dinner?…
A GROUP of itinerant players, each with a musical instrument, surrounded by raggedy children, turns up amid the Christmas crowd, and just a few notes on the fiddle captures their attention. The children whirl and dance, their parents play and clap and before long everyone is woven into the show. The magic of the Klezmer…
IN the UK, we go crazy for blue cheese at Christmas. There’s something about the spiciness and sense of indulgence that we get from a rich, creamy blue cheese that helps lift mid-winter blues (sorry) and provides a fitting end to the feast, particularly when perfectly matched with port. Sales of Stilton spike to such…
THREE very funny men are at the centre of the pantomime at Bath this Christmas, and when they are on stage the magic is tangible. It’s something you look for as much in the faces and voices of the children in the audience as on the stage, and there isn’t a more magical venue than…
BEFORE heading down to Dorset to cook for her sister Helen’s Dorset Corset Theatre Company, who will be performing A Christmas Carol at the Shelley Theatre, Boscombe, Philippa Davis was cooking for clients in Holland Park, and had a chance to sample the amazing variety of first class food available in the heart of London….
HISTORICALLY, the Brits have been brilliant at producing ham and bacon but rubbish at charcuterie – which is why most of the best-known examples of classic charcuterie have French or Italian or Spanish names, saucisson, confit, salami, guanciale, lardo, pancetta, jamon iberico, chorizo et al. But there is a quiet revolution going on in farms…
WARMINSTER’s Limelight Players played to full houses for four nights at the Athenaeum with The Vicar of Dibley: The Second Coming. Based on the 1990s television show (which starred Dawn French as the vicar of a rural parish full of eccentric characters), the show was first staged by the Limelight Players two years ago and…
POOLE’S Lighthouse Centre for the Arts has shone the spotlights onto circus and circus skills in a big way in recent years, so it’s hardly surprising that acrobatics, magic tricks and more big top fun make their way into the current pantomime. Really, Robin Hood isn’t a pantomime, and its inclusion into the genre usually…