IT may not seem a big deal, in the general scheme of devastated lives and shattered towns and cities, but the impact of the appalling Russian invasion of Ukraine stretches into many areas of life. Even food awards. This year’s 34th annual World Cheese Awards were due to take place in the war-torn country, and…
WE all need some good news, even if it is only very small – an egg. Salisbury Cathedral’s peregrines have laid their first egg – and within a few days there may be more. The female returned to the nest just before 7pm on Saturday 19th March and laid the egg just before 8. She…
VENICE is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Perhaps the most beautiful. And it has some famous (and famously expensive) hotels and restaurants. But with the emphasis on seafood, of course, and the traditional dishes such as fegato, it doesn’t have any kind of vegetarian food culture. So when we went to…
THE peregrines are back on their lofty perch at Salisbury Cathedral – and the webcam which allows us to see them has now gone live. They’ve been hanging around the tower for a while and have been seen mating, so the signs are good. Last year the first egg was laid on 15th March so…
THERE are so many good causes associated with the writing, production and presentation of this play that a desire to support them can take over your emotions. leaving you almost incapable of looking at the production as a piece of theatre. As someone who at a young age spent hours rolling my Rs in order…
DIRECTOR Rachel Butcher brings a cinematic vibe to her production of Agatha Christie’s Go Back for Murder, on at the Swan Theatre in Yeovil until 19th March. This is the one where Christie began with Poirot in the novel version, but changed him to young solicitor Justin Fogg for the stage, and the Swan was…
KINKY Boots, the film, came out in 2005, and was followed by Cyndi Lauper’s multi-award winning musical of the same name in 2012. It has arrived at Yeovil’s Octagon Theatre, performed by the versatile, plucky and very talented Yeovil Amateur Operatic Society – now known more modernly as YAOS Productions – and it’s on until…
AFTER Everton’s crushing 5-0 defeat by Tottenham Hotspurs in their last Premier League game, oh how Bill Kenwright must be wishing and hoping that his beloved football club, of which he is a lifelong fan and previous Chairman, will follow in the footsteps of this production and burst into life, performing at the top of…
Dove Sunshine Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22 Schubert Symphony No. 9 ‘The Great’ Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Amyn Merchant Mark Wigglesworth, conductor, Imogen Cooper, piano CURRENT tragic events in Ukraine are impossible to ignore, especially for an orchestra whose chief conductor for the last 13 years is the Ukrainian Kirill Karabits. Kirill was not…
WHEN you have a stage full of brilliantly created life-sized puppets, expertly manoeuvred and voiced, the storyline within the play being presented can undermined, at times almost forgotten. In the case of Robert Icke’s intense adaptation of George Orwell’s 1945 novella there was never a chance that the story would slip into the background. Brutally…