THE south-west of England has a particularly rich heritage of community plays – Dorchester has mounted seven, a record number. Increasingly, large theatres are commissioning plays for a vast cast of performers, usually with a professional production team and an amateur cast keen for the chance to make friends and perform on big stages, with…
SOME music just tugs at your heartstrings, no matter how often you hear it. A couple of bars of Puccini’s La Boheme and I am transported back to my very early childhood … my mother singing, or, a bit later when we had a radiogram, to Renata Tebaldi’s voice recorded at La Scala in 1951….
THE new exhibition at The Art Stable at Gold Hill Organic Farm, Child Okeford, features the work of 20th century painter and film-maker Humphrey Jennings and his daughter Charlotte. The work is on show in the main gallery and upstairs until 21st March. Best-known as a documentary film-maker, Humphrey Jennings (1907 to 1950) was described…
THE new exhibition at Salisbury Museum, in the Cathedral Close, is Un/Common People: Folk Culture in Wessex, runs to Sunday 10th May. Celebrating the rich folk art, traditions and seasonal customs of Wessex, the exhibition explores how folk culture has been shaped by communities past and present. Created by and for the people, folk…
QUEEN Camilla visited Bath Theatre Royal during rehearsals for the theatre’s epic community play, David Copperfield: A Life, which runs from 20th to 22nd February. Her Majesty has been Patron of the theatre since 2008, and last visited in 2009. As well as meeting some of the cast and crew of the play, she also…
WHEN one of Dorset’s finest painters persuaded one of the region’s most exciting sculptors to be painted at work in her studio, the results were bound to be exciting. And they are. Journey: Binny Matthews and Clare Trenchard, Paintings of the Sculptor’s Studio, is at Sladers Yard, West Bay, until 7th March. Inspired by Moroccan…
AN audienceful of avidly excited theatregoers packed into the Towngate Theatre in Poole’s Lighthouse with the full intention of being scared witless by Robin Herford’s production of Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel The Woman In Black. The long running show comes with an enviable pedigree of peril. The 1993 book has sold more…
BINGO! A bit of fun, maybe you could win a prize – but what happens when Mr Razzle Dazzle opens Bingo Night at The Stairway To Heaven Social Club (otherwise known as a village hall near you) on Saturday 28th February? Eyes Down, described as “a truly immersive comedy-thriller bingo night”, brings Bertie Bingo to…
SCOTTISH playwright David Greig set his 2002 play Outlying Islands on the furthest outlier rock from the Outer Hebrides in 1939, a time when Great Britain was holding its breath for another war and just nine years after 18-year-old Mary Anne MacLeod emigrated from Lewis to America … later to give birth to Donald Trump. That’s…
ONE of the most critically acclaimed stage performances of recent years comes to Theatre Royal Bath from Tuesday 24th to Saturday 28th February. Jodie Comer stars in Suzie Miller’s solo play, Prima Facie, an emotionally charged and challenging drama about a young barrister who is forced to confront the limitations of the law. The play…