THE new album by American folk singer and songwriter Mary Gauthier, Trouble and Love, is released on 9th June, ahead of her two UK visits this year. Mary’s own back story – from abandoned child in New Orleans through teenage runaway years, university drop out, petty crime, successful cook and restaurant owner through sleuth to…
JOHN Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, written in the 1620s and set in Italy, has incest as its central theme, and has been one of the most controversial plays ever performed. Not seen in England until 1923, the tragedy surrounds the bookish young Giovanni, returning from university and realising that he is in love…
SORTING through family homes after bereavement has been a rich mine for dramatists over the years, and the award-winning play by American writer Lynn Nottage at Bath’s Ustinov Studio is a powerful addition to the list. From her grandmother’s Brooklyn Brownstone, she recovered a shoebox of unidentified photographs, from which she wove this imagined story of her…
BARB Jungr has a new album of songs by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen…. A NEW album from Barb Jungr is always a thrill. You anticipate interpretations that will delight, inspire, perhaps puzzle, but are guaranteed to stay with you., When you have listened to a new collection of Barb’s songs, you know you…
TUESDAY Night is Pie Night. Music to the ears of the many fans of Terri Porter’s pie-making skills. Terri, who has taken over the village pub at Thornford, used to run the farm shop in nearby Yetminster, where she sold home-produced meat, vegetables and her own pies, cakes, sausage rolls and more. She was a…
ALL our lives we have tried to combine our love of old buildings with our love of good food. It’s not always easy, but there have been gastro-pubs in listed buildings, fine picnics in picturesque ruins, even a good tea in a defunct railway station. So when we gave Orkney a thought as a holiday…
PLAYS have been notoriously “going wrong” since they began, probably long before Shakespeare included the Mechanicals as Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and through the later part of the 20th century we have been treated to Michael Green’s various Coarse Acting versions of plays, the Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild’s badly produced…
JOAN Littlewood’s iconic musical satire Oh What a Lovely War, was first performed at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1963. A pierrot troupe, organised by a red-coated ringmaster, starts the proceedings with War Games, and as they unfold the audience is taken into the maelstrom of the Great War. Littlewood’s message is clear –…
THERE’s something afoot in the world of cheddar. Not the discovery that the Witch of Wookey Hole is real; but something with far greater implications. This year sees the British Cheese Awards taking place within the Bath and West show. Both events have been behemoths of the British Cheese scene – Bath and West specialising…
MURDER at Checkmate Manor was the ambitious choice of play staged by The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society or F.A.H.E.T.G.D.S for short. Most drama groups will have experienced a fear of things going wrong on opening night, but fortunately, for actors and audiences alike, the very worst rarely happens. Alas, not so…