THE Merlin’s in-house Christmas show is always a sell-out. This year is no exception and the eager audience is certainly in for a treat. Once again Claudia Pepler has directed and inspired the show, adapted for the stage by David Wood and based on Roald Dahl’s ever popular book. It’s full of fun and adventure,…
ONCE in a blue moon you get invited to review a Christmas show that turns out to be absolutely perfect in every possible way – colourful, inventive, packed with subtly non-worthy messages, fun, music, laughter, love, excitement, wit and passion, and equally delicious for all ages. That is what New International Encounter, Tobacco Factory Theatres…
ALMOST all the tickets for Salisbury Studio Theatre’s Christmas show at their Ashley Road HQ were sold out before the curtain rose on the opening night, such is the company’s reputation for excellence and versatility. It’s to their credit that they give newcomers a chance to show their skills, and several of them are on…
THERE isn’t a better way to gauge childrens’ reactions to a pantomime than to go along to a schools matinee – if you can stand the volume, that is. Four Wiltshire primary schools turned up for the first afternoon of Cinderella at the Playhouse this year, and the response was ear-shattering. When the Ugly Sisters…
THE familiar terpsichorean Nutcracker is all about Sugar Plum Fairies and magical, exotic dancing and the only thing it shares with Tom Morris’s farewell huzzah to Bristol Old Vic is a rather strange visitor with a special gift for the daughter of the house. Hoffman and Tchaikovsky go for Dr Drosselmeyer, who turns into the…
DEBORAH Moggach’s 2004 book These Foolish Things was famously adapted for the screen as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a star-studded smash hit in 2011. Now the writer has returned to the story of retired English making a new home in India, and created a stage play that brings references to England right up to…
IT is always a special treat and a joy to see ballet and opera staged in the grand manner, and at a time when all forms of the arts are under severe financial attack it was doubly so, to see 65 dancers on stage and hear a similar number of musicians giving full vent to…
Showmanism, on at Bath’s Ustinov Studio until 10th December, is an exploration of the nature of stories, of theatre and of the human condition. It starts with the words “I’m here” spoken perhaps from a speaker by a skull, and “by” Dickie Beau. Who is Dickie Beau –surely not his real name? Google him and…
BRISTOL’S leading songsters, including Lady Nade, headed for the Hen and Chicken in Bedminster to hear Nashville-based singer songwriters Mary Gauthier and Jaimee Harris this week, and Elles Bailey even joined them on stage for a couple of verses of Mercy Now, Mary’s best-known song. I’ve been listing and previewing shows at this venue-above-the-pub for…
A FRIEND of mine once spotted a poster in a New York travel agent’s window which read “Come to London and see Buckingham Palace, The Tower of London, Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and The Mousetrap. How a play which drew comments from some critics like “a middling piece.” “less in it than meets the…