I HAVE been looking forward to this production since early this year, when news reached me that a local school with an outstanding musical pedigree was planning to stage the schools edition of my favourite musical. I have seen half a dozen or so productions of this version, including in my home town of Gillingham,…
Sibelius: The Tempest Suite Grieg: Piano Concerto Sibelius: Symphony No. 7 Sibelius: Tapiola Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Amyn Merchant Kirill Karabits: Conductor Juho Pohjonen: Piano GETTING the balance right between the crowd-pulling ‘warhorses’ of the classical repertoire and equally-rewarding but less familiar music must be a constant preoccupation for the BSO’s management. Revenue must be…
MAGIC takes many forms. It can be good, it can be evil, it can charm and it can terrify. And all of it can be found in the pages of books, which, in these days of brightly-lit tablets, phones and gizmos, provide a mysterious enchantment. The Nuffield Theatre’s Christmas show this year is Merlin, written…
MOIRA Buffini’s hit play Handbag ged, which ends its 13-venue 2015 UK tour at Bath on Saturday 5th December, is the hilarious imagined story of the meetings between Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher between 1979 and 1990. It’s such recent history that most members of the audience have bits of…
ALAN Ayckbourn is one of Britain’s most popular playwrights and probably the favourite living writer with amateur groups (run a very close second by the other Alan – Bennett). Warminster’s Athenaeum Limelight Players chose his Seasons Greetings for their December show at the atmospheric old theatre – a black comedy that tarnishes the tinsel on the…
ALAN Bennett’s charming stage adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s tales of the riverbank is the ideal family show if you want to avoid pantomimes or even the mention of Christmas. Ed Viney directs the show for Bristol Old Vic Theatre School students this year, and his message throughout rehearsal was to have the sort of fun…
DRAMA students at the Arts University Bournemouth are performing a devised version of Charles Dickens’ masterpiece Bleak House at their studio theatre this week. It is an ensemble piece directed by the mime expert David Glass, and the students have the good fortune to be working with his mercurial inspiration to bring this tumultuous melodrama…
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 Elgar: Symphony No. 2 Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Amyn Merchant Vassily Sinaisky: Conductor Kirill Gerstein: Piano RADIO 3 listeners, as well as a full audience at the Lighthouse, were treated to a concert in which Russians were in charge both on the podium and the piano stool. Standing as it…
SO many of the phrases from Fawlty Towers – now incredibly celebrating its 40th anniversary – have found their way into everyday language that we feel we know the staff and customers at the Torquay guest house as well as we know our own friends. In Yeovil, where the Civic Players have been entertaining audiences…
MIKE Bartlett’s play King Charles III is half-way through a 20-venue UK tour, and filling Bath’s Theatre Royal until Saturday 28th November. The prolific 35-year-old playwright who brought the climate change play Earthquakes in London to the National Theatre, was commissioned by Rupert Goold to write this 2014 play, which sold out at the Almeida…