MAGNIFICENT musical madcap mallarkey, maintaining momentum movingly, magically, melodramatically memorable, meaningfully, markedly mad miracle, is the sort of sentence that used to be greeted with oohs and aahs as Leonard Sachs, as Master of Ceremonies, introduced a variety act on the BBC programme The Good Old Days from the Leeds City Varieties, with seemingly endless…
THERE were some who thought that a theatrical adaptation of Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, with its tense courtroom climax, would be unlikely to work in the sylvan setting of Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, but last summer’s production confounded the sceptics, winning rave reviews from critics and the sell-out audiences. When…
TRAVELLING chef Philippa Davis spent a weekend in Wales just before Christmas, cooking for a family on a farm in Pembrokeshire, which was the start of a new love affair for this energetic and inspirational Dorset woman. “Every home should have a dairy herd,” she says … If I was Father Christmas I would generally…
ONE of Dorset’s best-known farm shops celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Udder Farm Shop at East Stour, on the A30 west of Shaftesbury, began as a diversification project for farmer’s wife Jane Down and has become one of the success stories of the area. Jane and husband Brian have won many awards for the shop…
THERE’S a standing joke in our family that I ought to be awarded a Damehood, for services to pantomime. That’s because, for as long as I can remember (or at least since I last wrote a pantomime myself) I have been traipsing round the region reviewing professional pantos before Christmas, and amateur ones after. My…
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…