MATTHEW Bourne, the inspired creator of the all-male Swan Lake, and many other dance theatre pieces, scored another hit and won more awards with his 2021 production, The Midnight Bell, which comes to the Theatre Royal Bath from Tuesday 20th to Saturday 24th May, as part of a countrywide tour. His company, New Adventures, makes…
ANYONE who remembers Alfred Hitchcock’s enthralling and dramatic Cold War era thriller, North by North West, with its terrifying scene of the hero being pursued by a crop-duster plane, will want to see how the ever-inventive Emma Rice has adapted the 1950s film for the stage. Find out when her Wise Children company comes, all…
CELEBRITY names may tend to grab the headlines at book festivals, but the real meat of the event will always be the literary writers, the Booker prize-winners and those whose books make us think, tell us things we didn’t know we needed to know, prod us into thinking more deeply or excite our imagination in…
BATH was buzzing on Saturday night – the city’s famous rugby club was winning a big match against Leicester and excited fans were gathering round big screens in bars to celebrate the successes and camp glitz of Eurovision. The atmosphere in the beautiful Abbey was perhaps a little more muted, but the enthusiasm was palpable…
SOME people these days state their intention to work until they can retire at 45 and enjoy their houses, cars, children, pastimes and leisure while they are still comparatively young. And comparing them to Peggy Seeger, that’s sort of half-grown. The American-born singer-songwriter, half-sister of folk singer Pete Seeger, is still perhaps best known as…
ONE of the best-loved plays of the past 50 years, Educating Rita, comes to Cirencester’s tiny but adventurous Barn Theatre from Friday 16th May to Saturday 28th June. Willy Russell’s two-hander, originally staged in 1980 with Julie Walters in the title role, and three years later filmed with Walters again and Michael Caine as the…
HAD Sir William Schwenck Gilbert been alive today, I would take money on his including the latest and plupenultimate president of the United States and his South African top-line-of-keyboard-iconic tech bro sidekick, as well as those for whom personal pronouns are more important than personal relationships, in his brilliant patter songs … so thank goodness…
WHAT do you do if you inherit a traditional shoe factory that is about to be swamped by cheap overseas imports. If your name is Clark, you convert the main factory site into a shopping village and introduce a smaller range of specialist shoes. Kinky Boots, for all its flamboyant story and big scale musical…
ANTHONY Shaffer’s edge-of-your-seat thriller Sleuth comes to the Swan Theatre in Yeovil from 19th to 24th May. Some may remember the 1972 movie, now a classic of its genre, which was filmed at Athelhampton. The Sway production is directed by Sarah Ambrose, it has Robert Graydon as Andrew Wyke and Chris Williamson as Milo Tindle,…
HOW do you set about reviewing a play? That’s a question that lots of people ask, and the answer is complicated. For anyone who has been doing it as long as I have, it is a combination of experience, knowledge of the work, previous productions and performances, the effect THIS production has on THIS audience…