THE enlightened populace of the 21st century can hardly get its head around the idea that, not too long ago, our ancestors regarded human beings as property to be insured, and compensated for, just as any other commodity. If we look not too deeply into it, there are STILL some landed gentry living off the…
THE song lyric ‘Never, never trust a woman, You’ll be sorry if you do, For man was made out of a monkey, And a Dame will make a monkey out of you’, came to mind as this play closed with Max, Keith Allen’s bullying patriarch, suddenly realising that it was his apparently credulous daughter-in law-Ruth,…
AS the second season of Gentleman Jack returns to our screens, the interest of the audience will once again turn to Shibden Hall, the beautiful Tudor house where Miss Anne Lister grew up, and where she lived with her aunt, uncle and sister – when she wasn’t travelling, usually with her lover and wife, Ann…
WHILE Janacek’s Jenufa and Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, the companions to Mozart’s Don Giovanni on the Welsh National Opera’s spring tour, leave the impression that they are yet to reach their full potential, the blend of singers, musicians, and designers in Mozart’s magnificent opera seem as well blended as cordon bleu omelette. Baritone Aaron O’Hare, suave…
THE versatile and talented Frome Drama company has chosen Christopher Hampton’s 1985 play Les Liaisons Dangereuses for its first show of 2022 at the Merlin. Loosely translated from the epistolary novel by Choderlos de Laclos in 1982, it is a story of love, sex, revenge, jealousy and sophisticatedly complex plotting. It requires enormous skill both…
THIS Katie Mitchell production dates back nearly a quarter of a century, first seen in the pre-Millennium Centre days when the New Theatre Cardiff was WNO’s home base. Now re-imagined by co-director Eloise Lally and staff director Sarah Crisp, it has lost none of its power to capture the hearts of an audience as the…
THE cast at Studio Theatre in Salisbury waited for two years to put on their production of Amanda Whittington’s 2013 Ruth Ellis play, The Thrill of Love – and the result proves that it was well worth the wait. The facts that led up to the 1955 murder, which resulted in the last woman in…
APPLES and the drinks we make from them have an ancient history, buried deep both in the wild fruit forests of Kazakhstan and in European myths and legends. There is something irresistible and indomitable about our mutual relationship. Here’s a story from Ukraine, via the American food website and newsletter Broken Palate. It is both…
A NEW project to record heritage sites that matter to local communities has been launched by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Somerset and the Exmoor National Park is one of 22 pilots for this new Local Heritage List. The list is intended to help to protect buildings, sites and structures that local…
TO say that this show only scratches the surface of the life and work of composer/singer Carole King would be putting it mildly. With more than 100 pop songs that found their way into the charts and 25 solo albums, many written for some of the top musical artists to emerge in the later part…