TO say that my husband is fanatical about beans is an understatement. He collects them as a numismatist collects stamps. When abroad he seeks out shops which sell the seeds, a hobby which has taken us to some interesting back streets in major towns and cities abroad, while our friends spend time in galleries or…
SHREK is a little like Sondheim’s Into The Woods – with familiar fairy tale characters linked by a new story. From my first knowledge of Shrek I was intrigued: a cinema trailer with famous fairytale characters started appearing in late 2000, even before very grown-up films, and I was hooked. When the film came out…
ALAN Ayckbourn had already written as many plays as Shakespeare by the age of 48, the age at which the Bard died, and has now completed almost 80 plays. He enjoys gimmicks, such as his Norman Conquest trilogy, in which the action takes place in three parts of the same house, living room, dining room…
ALAN Bennett’s 13 television plays Talking Heads are widely regarded as mini-masterpieces, and marked the beginning of his recognition as a major playwright. Now the Bournemouth based ImpAct Theatre has chosen three – Her Big Chance, originally performed by Julie Walters, A Chip in the Sugar, which Bennett performed himself, and A Lady of Letters,…
PHILIPPA Davis, the adventurous travelling chef from Shaftesbury, has now finished her month in Boston. She had intended her final postcard would be about night fishing – but the photographs didn’t work! She says: Maybe I should have thought it through a little better? I had visited Harvard a few days prior to this and…
JOAN Littlewood’s extraordinary musical satire Oh What a Lovely War is possibly the most effective anti-war show ever devised, accessible to all ages and attitudes and shining the searchlight from all angles on the reality of conflicts. In this Great War anniversary year, productions of the show – first performed by Theatre Workshop in East…
BATH audiences are fortunate to be able to see a powerful and important award-winning American play, receiving its UK premiere this month at the Theatre Royal’s Ustinov studio. Joshua Harmon’s play Bad Jews is set in a New York studio apartment with a view of the Brooklyn river glimpsed from the bathroom. Brothers Liam and…
EMILE Zola’s intense novel Therese Raquin gets the Helen Edmundson treatment at Bath Theatre Royal this summer. This new adaptation, steeped in the inescapable power of unleashed passion and guilt, is on stage at Bath until 16th August as part of the summer season. The adapter’s work with Shared Experience is evident in Jonathan Munby’s…
AL Stewart has been many years in the USA and his recorded output is rare – the last album was 2009’s Uncorked – but his fan base is loyal and undiminished. So when he announced a one-off gig at the Tivoli in Wimborne, a couple of miles from where he grew up in a thatched…
MOST of us would hesitate about welcoming thousands of people on to our land every year. But television star and animal lover Martin Clunes opens fields at his farm at Beaminster every August for Buckham Fair, a one-day country show which has become a firm favourite with visitors and people from across the region. Now…