A TEAM of Dorset conservation officers and volunteers has begun a project to plant native wildflowers and meadow grasses at Bere Marsh Farm near Shillingstone, aimed at enhancing biodiversity on the Stour floodplain fields. The 92-acre Bere Marsh Farm, between the old Somerset and Dorset railway line and the river, is owned by the Countryside…
OPEN-air theatre company SISATA is back on home ground on Portland on Sunday 8th September, nearing the end of a lengthy national and local summer tour, with a production of Peter Pan, in the setting which inspired this retelling of JM Barrie’s famous tale. The performance, next to Portland Bill lighthouse, features four local professional…
IT is common practice nowadays to take a successful musical film or a drama (some with a minimum of music involved), and adapt it for the stage as a musical. A few have benefitted from the transfer, others, like Bonnie and Clyde: The Musical, have fallen by the wayside despite good reviews and audience reaction….
ART, Yasmina Reza’s award-winning hit play, is a very odd thing, when you think about it. It is a play by a French woman dramatist, about three men (the women are only referred to as peripheral characters and frankly get a pretty bad rep), about male friendship and about art. These are very French themes…
THE words of Simon Butteriss and the lyrics of the late, great, John Mortimer – with a few of the greatest hits of Johann Strauss – is a recipe for comic opera heaven, and that is what audiences at IfOpera at Belcombe Court in Bradford-on-Avon enjoyed this season. Simon Butteriss was a favourite in the…
CONCERTS in the West, the charity which brings rising stars of the chamber music scene to the West Country, opens the autumn season with four recitals by the Mela guitar quartet, bringing a “festival of music” to Bridport Arts Centre on Friday 6th September at 11.30am, for the shorter coffee concert, that evening at Ilminster…
ALAN Bennett’s play The History Boys, first seen at the National Theatre in 2004 and later filmed, launched the careers of several young actors and quickly embedded itself as a favourite Bennett work. It was seen at Bath Theatre Royal in 2007 as part of its first national tour, and again in 2010 and 2011….
ONE of the most popular plays of the past three decades, Yasmina Reza’s Art comes to Poole Lighthouse from 29th to 31st August, and at Bath in a new 30th anniversary production at the start of the Theatre Royal’s autumn season, from Tuesday 3rd to Saturday 7th September. The play is directed by Iqbal Khan…
FORTY years ago community activists Sue and John Holman and Trevor Bailey decided to make a video about the North Dorset village of Bourton and its people. In the intervening years the film has been largely forgotten, but now the original tapes have been digitised by Windrose Media Trust, which was founded by Trevor Bailey,…
IF you are scared of spiders (and I am), the names Black Widow, Red Backed, Dancing White Lady or Tarantula are sure to send you into a near-catatonic state. But when they are the inspiration for an exciting piece of music, composed for the harp and played by an exceptionally talented young harpist, they do…