PANTOMIME is a very English thing – you only have to try an American version and you would know what I mean. It is enormously versatile, and the fairy stories on which most pantos are based are open to almost endless interpretations and updatings. There are a few essentials, forming a sort-of skeleton without which…
THE Merlin Christmas show is traditionally a feast of fun and talent, featuring a huge number of performers, technicians and back stage supporters – and this year’s show, on until 13th December, is no exception, with a regular cast of 25 and two alternating teams of ten leading players and dancers as well. Roald Dahl’s…
PLAYWRIGHT Sir Tom Stoppard, who was born in the former Czechoslovakia in 1937, has died at the age of 88. He lived near Shaftesbury and, despite his international profile and long list of major stage, writing and film awards, was actively supportive of the arts, theatre and music in the area. There was an early…
AFTER what seems like centuries of watching and reviewing pantomimes, it is always a great thrill to spot a superstar performance on a local stage, and wait until the national critics and award-giving organisations put that name in their best-of-the-year lists. Salisbury Playhouse’s inventive, colourful, energetic and 100% fun version of Jack and the Beanstalk…
THERE is rich magic running through the Brewhouse Christmas show this year, and it seems to emanate from the mysterious rhynes and mumps around the county town, which can be surrounded in fast-rising water almost without warning, turning it into a different land. Sound a bit “woo-woo”? – well, maybe. Writer and director Sasha Wilson…
OLIVER Goldsmith’s 1773 comedy She Stoops to Conquer is said to have been based on an incident in his childhood, in which he was jestingly directed to a local manor house which he was told was an inn. Whatever the truth of the attribution, it resulted in a classic play that has stood the test…
IF you love folk and traditional music with a festive flavour, you probably already know that Christmas and the Mellstock Band go together like turkey and cranberry sauce. This December, the delightful quartet, who recreate the music of Thomas Hardy’s time, come to Bridport Arts Centre on Saturday 13th December at 7.30pm. The name Mellstock…
TELEVISION schedules are packed with so-called “holiday” favourites (often films that didn’t get rave reviews first time out), and theatres are bursting at the seams with Dames, ugly sisters and winsome princesses, but Moviola’s audiences have different ideas, and the mobile cinema organisation’s December programme has a fascinating selection, led by the bittersweet Ballad of…
FRESH from his adventures in the Celebrity Traitors’ Scottish castle, historian David Olusoga comes to Bridport Electric Palace on Friday 12th December at 7.30pm, with a new talk, History’s Missing Chapters, in which he explores how and why some people and some events are remembered and others are forgotten. The acclaimed author, broadcaster and newspaper…
BOTANICAL artist Pauleen Trim grew up in the beautiful, peaceful Winterborne valley south of Blandford, in an area full of wildflowers, plants and trees. She still lives, with her husband Jim, in Winterborne Whitechurch surrounded by friends, family – and that beautiful landscape of fields, hedges, trees and gentle hills. From childhood, she had always loved…