The Arts Section

Queer ladies eat quiche

THE clock at Strode Theatre will be turning the clock back almost 70 years next week, when the Street Theatre Company brings Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood’s play 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche to the region for the first time. Set in New York State in 1956, The Susan B Anthony Society for the Sisters…

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Dreaming round Somerset with the Thespians

TAUNTON Thespians head out on the road on Tuesday 15th July for their summer tour, this year taking William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights’ Dream to ten venues around Somerset. Directed by Bob Corwin, the big-cast company will tell the ever-popular story of capricious young lovers and their dictatorial parents, a group of local workmen putting…

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Noises Off, Studio Theatre, Salisbury

I MUST have seen Michael Frayn’s enduringly hilarious play Noises Off more than a dozen times during my reviewing life, with TV stars, leading West End actors, the Number 3 touring professional companies that it sends up, and by amateurs. I have never seen a production so wonderfully inventive and brilliantly performed as that by…

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The Sound of Music, Shaftesbury Arts Centre

RODGERS and Hammerstein’s last musical together, The Sound of Music, was first performed only 14 years after the end of the Second World War, when memories of Nazi incursions over Europe were fresh in the minds of audiences. Now, the details of that war are unfamiliar to younger viewers, but, thanks to the powerful story…

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Grace Pervades, Bath Theatre Royal

THE first performances of David Hare’s new play Grace Pervades offer a unique opportunity to theatre lovers – to sit in one of the country’s most beautiful theatres learning fascinating facts about Victorian theatre legends Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, from a stage on which they actually performed. And, for these days of breathless star-struckery,…

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Last concert of the season …

THE Shaftesbury Chamber Music Series ends its season ton Saturday 5th July with a concert at the Farrington Hall at Port Regis by the Aquinas Piano Trio. Once again series found Ruth Rogers joins Martin Cousin and Katherine Jenkinson, this time for a programme of works by Mozart, Ireland, Shostakovich and Brahms. The performance starts…

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Shaftesbury’s alive with The Sound of Music

SHAFTESBURY Arts Centre will be bursting with the sounds of Rodgers and Hammerstein as audiences are transported to the Austrian Alps in the febrile days before the outbreak of World War II and the immortal songs of The Sound of Music. The centre’s Music and Drama Group has chosen the perennially popular musical for its…

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Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Bristol Hippodrome

IF you have reached the stage when you think “O no, not another juke box musical”, think again – because this stage version of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 film leaves the rest of them trailing in its wake. Practically every number, from the spectacularly-staged The Sparkling Diamond to the haunting Nature Boy, fits the storyline, which…

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Moviola in July and August

POPULAR films with Moviola in July and August are the latest Bridget Jones (Mad About the Boy) and the courtroom drama Juror No 2. These films are at Moviola venues across the region: July – Bridget Jones (Mad About the Boy) is being shown at Codford St Peter (Woolstore Theatre), Highcliffe (community centre), Charlton Marshall,…

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