I FIRST discovered Thalis 25 years ago at the Mandeer, a delightful vegetarian Indian restaurant hidden downstairs in a tiny alley behind the junction of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. Their menu included up to seven different Thalis, each made up of a tray of six or seven katoris, small stainless steel bowls, with…
BLACKMAIL is often touted as the first British “talkie”, as Director Alfred Hitchcock got permission during filming to make parts of it with sound, and ended up recording sound for most of the film. It was actually the third or fourth film released with sound; two versions came out in June 1929, to allow for…
THE Meaden family from Minchington, on Cranborne Chase, has completed a full restoration of a traditional fingerpost sign in the small hamlet near Sixpenny Handley. Bill Meaden, owner of Cranborne Chase Cider, and his father Simon paid for the refurbishment which was carried out with the skills of Adam Batty and Graham Cradock. The restoration…
WE tend to take our national treasures for granted and perhaps it is only when we have visitors from overseas that we see ourselves through their eyes. But one way to make the most of Britain’s extraordinarily rich historic, architectural and landscape heritage is to take out membership of one or more of the organisations…
AS part of this year’s Arts by the Sea Festival, Fuel Theatre Company have blacked out a large room in the Pavilion Dance complex and invite the audience to sit in complete darkness for an hour, wearing wireless headphones, and be transported to another “very similar” room. Director David Rosenberg, a doctor and qualified anaesthetist,…
CHARLES Dickens’ famously tense and spooky novel Great Expectations has been revised by Neil Bartlett for his new production at Bristol Old Vic, performed by nine actors on a sparsely furnished stage in which the soundscape is as important as the props might usually be. It’s a bold reading of the famous story, rich in…
THE beautiful barns of Ashley Wood Farm near Tisbury were a home-from- home for the Creative Cow company, whose rehearsals are held in a Devon agricultural building with perplexed cows looking on. On 29th September the new production of Shakespeare’s farcical comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor was performed at the “new” Tisbury venue after…
YOU don’t expect to go to the nightclub/ disco/farmer’s market venue in Wincanton on a Sunday afternoon to see an Edinburgh Fringe style – and standard – show, but that’s what happened on 29th September, when Fringe Files put on their inventive play UnderLINE. The matinee started with Stuart Lyddon’s solo piece Sorry, the unfolding…
WHEN I heard, at the end of last year, that Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones were going to be directed by Mark Rylance in a new production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Vic on London’s South Bank in September 2013, I booked my seats immediately. So, with expensive tickets waiting to…
THE Wars of the Roses surge across the stage in the Shakespeare’s Globe on Tour’s tumultuous Henry VI plays, at Bath Theatre Royal until Saturday 28th October – the final night of a tour that started in June. On the last day, all three plays – Harry the Sixth, The Houses of York and Lancaster…