The Arts Section

Summer music at Whitcombe Manor

WHITCOMBE Manor hosts the annual Dorchester Arts summer party with music, on Sunday 19th July from 1pm, with star performer Liza Pulman providing the entertainment. The beautiful 300-year old manor is the home of best-selling crime and historical novelist Minette Walters, and her husband Alec. Liza Pulman returns to Dorset after a sold out appearance…

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Jazz Jurassica at the Electric Palace

BRIDPORT’s Art Deco theatre, the Electric Palace, is a stylish setting for a Jazz Jurassica event on Saturday 18th July at 3pm, celebrating Blue Note and the history of jazz. The Sound of Blue Note — the band — takes its name from a sound that shaped jazz history. It’s a sound that jazz buffs…

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The stoker who survived the Titanic

THE tragic sinking of the Titanic is one of the best-known stories in maritime history – but how much do we know about the people who survived from the lower decks? A remarkable one-man play, coming to Dorchester Arts at the Corn Exchange on Tuesday 14th July at 7.30pm, tells the story of a stoker…

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Who was Mrs Danvers?

A MERE mention of the name Mrs Danverss ends a shard of ice down the spines of most fans of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.  That’s if you only know her as the terrifying housekeeper of Manderley. Find out more in a new one-woman play, Becoming Mrs Danvers, at Bridport Arts Centre on Saturday 18th July,…

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Summer rep at Lyme

THE Jurassic coast can now boast a second summer play festival – just a few miles east of Sidmouth, with its Manor Pavilion summer season, the Marine Theatre at Lyme Regis welcomes the return of the professional Gilroy Theatre Company, with a season of five plays, from 28th July to 28th August. The first is…

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Ceruleo’s serves up summer baroque delights

LESSER-known baroque composers, including Barbara Strozzi, take centre place in Ceruleo’s programme for the July series of Concerts at Bridport Arts Centre for the coffee time concert at 11.30am on Friday 10th July, Ilminster Arts Centre at 7.30pm that evening and Saturday 11th at 7.30pm at Crewkerne Dance House. Described as a group that “feels…

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Jersey Boys, Bristol Hippodrome and touring

THE Four Seasons rock band was formed in 1960 when two members of the novelty act The Four Lovers, singer Frankie Valli and guitarist Tommy DeVito, were joined by bass player Nick Massi and composer and keyboard player Bob Gaudio. With changing personal, but always with the strong high falsetto voice of Frankie Valli as…

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The spy who came in with a vacuum cleaner

GRAHAM Greene had a dry sense of humour, never better shown than in Our Man In Havana, which has been adapted for the stage by the actor and writer Clive Francis. The new comedy of a vacuum cleaner salesman caught up in espionage in pre-revolutionary Cuba comes to Salisbury Playhouse from 14th to 18th July…

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Powerful modern classic comes to Bath

THREE acclaimed actors – Toby Stephens, Amanda Abbington and Noah Valentine – play the leading roles in Peter Shaffer’s dark, probing masterpiece, Equus, which comes to Bath Theatre Royal from Tuesday 14th to Saturday 25th July, in a production directed by Lindsay Posner, which received rave reviews when it premiered at the Menier Chocolate Factory….

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Fawlty Towers, the play, Bath Theatre Royal

FOR those of us of a certain age, it seems incredible that the television series Fawlty Towers had only 12 half-hour episodes when it was first shown in 1975 … more than 50 years ago. Its set-piece scenes and catch phrases – and of course Sybil’s laugh – fast entered the Comedy Hall of Fame,…

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