IVAN Gil Ortega and Irena Pasaric who restaged this classic ballet obviously believed in the old saying that “if it ain’t broke, don’t mend it”. Picking up from Derek Deane and Frederick Ashton’s choreography, which in turn owed a great deal to Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov’s original concept in 1877, Ortega and Pasaric lovingly…
DAVID Walliams can add musical triumph to his varied CV, in a career which seems to have settled him into a successful role as a writer of children’s books. They may not be great literature but they are hugely enjoyable, relevant and POPULAR. He was at the new Nuffield Theatre in Southampton on Wednesday for…
Stravinsky Pulcinella Suite (1949) Walton Cello Concerto Shostakovich Symphony No 1 Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Amyn Merchant Kirill Karabits: Conductor Johannes Moser: Cello THE latest in the line of distinguished holders of the BSO’s artist in residence post was unveiled last night at the Lighthouse. He is the 39-year-old German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser. This is…
SOCIAL media, “me too” et al have led a move away from professional reviewers to “citizen journalists”, every one of whom has an equal right to an opinion, and each opinion equally valid. If you were put off by the almost universal national press slatings of Rufus Norris’s National Theatre production of Macbeth and you…
ROBERT Harling’s semi-autobiographical play Steel Magnolias is set in the beauty parlour of a town in the made-up Chinquapin Parish of Louisiana, in reality Natchitoches, with its big sister Shreeveport up the road for the Christmas Lights Festival. It’s a brilliant play, with its cast of six women, and it was transferred to the big…
FROME Drama Club has grabbed the chance to enlist young Anabella Fairgrieve and put her centre stage in a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, and the result is a triumph. Incredibly assured for one so young (she’s only 16), this enormously talented actress is headed for the top, and it’s a delight to see…
IT is easy to make fun of the TV series Benidorm, describing it as shallow, appealing to the lowest sense of humour, always looking for the cheapest easy laugh available and very non-PC in its humour, but there has to be more than that to it in order for it to survive eleven series attracting…
ALTHOUGH 20 years separate the formation of these groups and one is a trio, albeit for this concert they were added to by a guest viola player, and the other is a quartet, they have quite a deal in common. The Amatis are part of the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Young Artist Scheme which…
THE views of Jurgen Klopp, manager of Premier League club Liverpool, on the subject of early kick offs are well known. He dislikes them intensely. This is reflected incidentally in the patchy results teams under his management have achieved. With that in mind, I wondered about the wisdom of asking the three bright young musicians…
NICOLA Werenowska’s powerful exploration of displacement and identity across three generations of a Polish family, Silence, reaches the end of its ten-venue tour at Salisbury, where it is on stage at the Salberg Studio until 17th November. Maria lived in Warsaw as Poland was invaded by both Germany and Russia, and she and her husband…