THERE are quite a few similarities between Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw and Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus, as there are about the background of the two authors, born within a year of one another. Both plays contain farcical elements using comedy to expose what the authors see as hypocrisy among the medical profession that…
GENERALLY, when you go to the theatre, you expect (hope) to like or at least empathise with some or all of the characters – but not with Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. All the characters – apart from the bumbling maid Edith – are more or less unpleasant. And Yeovil’s Civic Players production has absolutely nailed…
THERE are some things, like the legendary film Casablanca, that have no right to be successful. Writers brothers J and P Epstein were continually rewriting the script, sometimes delivering changes on the day of shooting. At least three different endings were envisaged, producer Jack L Warner so disliked the final iconic ending with Humphrey Bogart…
STOURHEAD Gardens are beautiful at any time of the year – gorgeous in the full colours of autumn, magical on a frosty or snowy morning, verdant with freshly opening leaves in early spring – but May and June sees the gardens at their most colourful. Henry Hoare’s paradise looks its best with vivid rhododendrons and…
CERAMICIST Yo Thom and painter Vanessa Gardiner do not immediately have much in common, but when you see their work together – as you can at Sladers Yard gallery at West Bay until 14th July – you see synergies and a shared sense of structure in the clean lines of their very different artworks. North…
FOLDE Dorset, the specialist nature bookshop in Shaftesbury, has been certified as a B Corporation (B Corp), continuing its founders’ commitment towards operating as a force for good, while becoming a go-to destination for nature writing, and locally sourced art and craft. The attractive shop at the top of Gold Hill joins a network of…
ARTWORKS by members of an international artists’ community, who are focusing on ways in which we exploit and nurture the earth’s resources, will be at Amanda Wallwork’s studio on the top floor of The Old Timber Yard, West Bay, over the weekends Friday 31st May to Sunday 2nd June and Friday 7th to Sunday 9th…
SEAHORSES are enchanting, magical creatures – but they are vulnerable to many forces, human and natural. There is an important but fragile population ion Britain’s two native seahorse species – the spiny and short snouted seahorse – in the Studland seagrass meadow, which itself is a threatened habitat. The meadow is a voluntary no-anchor zone…
THE historic setting of Somerset Rural Life Museum at Glastonbury, with the ancient tithe barn, is the setting for a showcase of artwork by 13 printmakers living and working in Somerset, from 25th May to 1st September. Somerset Printmakers are a group of professional artists dedicated to creating original prints and pushing the boundaries of…
DAVID Grieg’s new “play with songs,” Midsummer, made a triumphant premiere at Colchester’s Mercury Theatre, and now plays at the Barn at Cirencester until late June. I can’t urge you enough to go and see it. Musicals are strange things these days. Some of them gain immediate cult status and continue for season after season…