“There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit and it’s filled with people who are filled with shit! And the vermin of the world inhabit it …” These lyrics from Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd kept coming into my head as I watched Kneehigh’s shocking, stunning, exciting and often terrifying “Beggars’ Opera for…
THERE are legends surrounding Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, including the need to refer to it only as “the Scottish play” to avoid its clinging curses. But at the Studio Theatre in Ashley Road, Salisbury, director Chris Hawley rather hopes it will be a lucky choice. The excellent amateur company won the 2011 Royal Shakespeare Company’s first…
BOURNEMOUTH Arts by the Sea Festival is now in its fourth year and with funding secured for the next two years at least, the future looks bright. The Festival, advertised as being for the culturally curious (and I hope I can be counted as being amongst that number) takes place in venues both familiar and…
BOO-KHAKI, which I have purposely written phonetically in case it sets off all sorts of bad language alerts and filters on computers, is an extreme sexual act, one which should not be Googled, and one of many listed in the title song of this, the latest offering from Living Spit; listed as things which Elizabeth…
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Leader Amyn Merchant Kirill Karabits: Conductor Andreas Ottensamer, Clarinet MOZART: Clarinet Concerto BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 7 A PROBABLY apocryphal story tells of how the conductor Otto Klemperer was once asked who he thought was the greatest composer. “Beethoven, without doubt”, he replied. Struck by the speed of his answer, his questioner replied…
THE spaces in between the words we say and our thoughts are explored with poetic beauty in Woman Of Flowers, a powerful contemporary reworking of one of the ancient Celtic myths contained in the Welsh treasury known as The Mabinogion Written by Kaite O’Reilly for the supremely versatile deaf actress Sophie Stone, Woman Of Flowers…
AMATEUR is a word that will soon no longer be needed, at least not in the theatre, and certainly not in Yeovil. With world-class intimate plays at the Swan Theatre and big full-stage, huge-cast musicals at the Octagon, it is hard to distinguish between these shows and the professional output on show at Bristol Hippodrome and…
SITTING in the dark for almost an hour, in complete darkness, with not even a speck of light, whilst wearing headphones, and listening. That is all that is asked of the audience by Fuel Theatre in their latest work, the second such show I have attended – it would inaccurate to use the word “seen”!…
THINK of Bizet’s Carmen and you think of sultry heat, intense colour and tangible passion … or at least, I do. So Jonathan Miller’s touring production for Mid-Wales opera comes as a bit of a surprise, on many levels. Of course the timeless story can be set in all sorts of periods, and here in…
THEREMINS seem to be everywhere this year: Rick Wakeman and Bill Bailey have both played them on recent tours and the whining electronic hands-free instrument used in the theme tune to Midsomer Murders also features as part of the live soundtrack to Abram Room’s 1929 film The Ghost That Never Returns, shown as part of…