IT would be foolish of me to simply review this play, which I should admit is probably my favourite play, and certainly the play I have seen the most. I happened to be living and working in London when it first opened more than 20 years ago, and managed to see most of the 26…
REMEMBER the hope and excitement that followed the Labour victory in 1997, just days after Katrina and the Waves sang Love Shine a Light and won Eurovision for the UK? That’s when the Wardrobe Ensemble’s award-winning devised play, set in a failing comprehensive, all starts. It’s also the day that Tobias, a German exchange teacher,…
NOW in its 19th year, Sherborne Abbey Festival was founded in 2000 to celebrate music within the inspiring setting of local historic churches, schools and, of course, the Abbey itself. And as this year’s publicity tells us, with up to 70% of the performances being completely free, the festival can rightly claim to be one…
THERE was a time when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was not only the world’s most famous (fictional) consulting detective, but was also taken very seriously. You could call that multi-book-play-film version Sherlock Holmes Mk 1, pre-Moffat and Gatiss – but post-Moffat/Gatiss’s sexy, tousle-headed Sherlock with his swirling overcoat, quickfire dialogue and dazzling digital…
BATH’s Ustinov Theatre, under the artistic direction of Laurence Boswell, has been hailed as the country’s leading studio theatre, and the opening of Samuel D Hunter’s The Whale will undoubtedly underpin that well-deserved reputation. Running two hours without interval, it charts a week in the life of Charlie, a morbidly obese man who lives in…
THE Representation of the People Act which enfranchised British women over the age of 30 and with property rights had been passed in February 1918, but by Christmas 1918, the completed ballot papers for the first general election to include their votes lay uncounted. Progress had been, and many believe continues to be, astonishingly slow….
IN a dilapidated former health service supplies depot behind Pokesdown Station, the BEAF festival 2108 took flight with The Vodka Hunters. The site-specific show – four solo plays directed by playwright and novelist Nell Leyshon and devised by her and the performers – is about parenthood, seen from the eyes of “outsiders”. Boscombe has been…
WITH the imminent recordings on the Signum label of string quartets by Anton Dvořák, the Albion Quartet presented two of these as part of its recent tour organised by Concerts in the West. Schubert’s A minor Quartet, Rosamunde, was the third quartet of Albion’s programme. Dvořák’s F minor (1873) and E major (1876) quartets were…
MISS Shepherd is (possibly) the best-known inadvertent lodger in English literature, thanks to National Treasure playwright and actor Alan Bennett’s story, play and film The Lady in the Van. The then-young star of Beyond the Fringe moved into the then-affordable Camden in the 1970s, and soon afterwards allowed an eccentric woman who lived in a…
THERE could hardly be a more perfect time to stage Arthur Miller’s profoundly moving play A View From the Bridge than in 2018, when our daily attention is focussed on deporting “illegal” immigrants – both from the UK and from Trump’s America. Mike Tweddle, artistic director of Tobacco Factory Theatres in Bedminster, chose the play…