THE West Gallery church music that Thomas Hardy knew and loved was brought to vivid life again last week in two picturesque West Dorset churches in concerts organised by Artsreach, Dorset’s rural arts organisation. The West Gallery concerts at Winterbourne Abbas and Abbotsbury churches, were part of Rooting Around the Ridgeway, a South Dorset Ridgeway…

THE Frome Merlin Christmas show has built up a reputation for invention, technical excellence and a chance for a whole community to take part, and this year’s production of Clemence Dane’s 1948 stage adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic books is no exception. Fledgling director Anne Dimery, who has staged managed countless Merlin shows, has created…

SALISBURY Playhouse has chosen a traditional pantomime again this year, and the familiar story of Dick Whittington has some clever twists and a modern makeover in the very funny script by Andrew Pollard. If you choose not to have a female principal boy, it’s essential that the actor in the leading heroic role is handsome,…

WHAT watery treats are in store for theatregoers in Bristol this Christmas – with The Little Mermaid and Antarctica at the Old Vic, and now Last Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor at the Tobacco Factory in Bedminster. The venue has linked up with Travelling Light theatre to devise this wonderfully inventive retelling of some of…

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Amyn Merchant Conductor: Yan Pascal Tortelier Augustin Hadelich, Violin R Strauss
Till Eulenspiegel Hindemith
Mathis der Maler Symphony Beethoven
Violin Concerto ‘Pranks and Penitence’ was the somewhat puzzling label that BSO’s marketing department put on this diverse programme. The pranks were clearly in the first piece, but neither of the others deals particularly with…

MODERN theatres all over the country are looking for that elusive formula that allows them to put on a non-pantomime Christmas show for the family without compromising on the essential elements that have made panto so successful for so many years. And in these cash-strapped times, that means not only a fresh approach to music…

BACK in 2005, students from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School gave the first performance of Adrian Mitchell’s adaptation of CS Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe outside Stratford-upon-Avon, and this Christmas a new bunch of training actors has returned to the children’s story, directed by Jenny Stephens. This sell-out show, at the Redgrave…

IF you are wondering how to occupy small children in the run-up to Christmas, or in the days following the holidays, there probably won’t be a more wondrous experience than Little Bulb Theatre’s Antarctica, on at Bristol Old Vic Studio until 4th January. Specially created for very young audiences and their families, but equally enchanting for…

THE audience at the Spiegeltent, in Bristol for the month up to Christmas, may have been the first to hear the Tiger Lillies’ new commission from Opera North, Lulu – a Murder Ballad, on 1st December. Loosely based on Wedekind’s Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, it is 20 songs and interludes charting the life and…

FROME-based actor, playwright (and now film director) Pip Utton has an extraordinary knack of inhabiting his characters, so that their familiar tics and expressions become part of his face and body. His solo shows are now the stuff of theatrical legend, after many years packing houses on the Edinburgh Fringe, and touring to venues large…