WHY is it that fairy tales are always described as timeless? It is just because they are just as relevant to every new generation of children, as Chippenham-born writer and actor Florence Espeut-Nickless discovered when she was preparing the Bristol Old Vic Weston Studio Christmas show, Little Red and Other Winter Tales. Florence, the “writer…
BRISTOL Old Vic’s 2024-25 Christmas show takes this famous story, gives it a contemporary environmental twist and creates something more beautiful, more powerful, more moving and more thoughtful than the original. It will also probably be the most inspiring Christmas show of the year – with a message that sings and swims throughout from the…
EDITH Evans, that grand theatrical dame who took over-acting to a fine art, once became so exasperated with a ‘method’ actor, who in rehearsal was moving and doing things continually during a scene, that she exploded – and, fixing the young man with a beady eye, announced in stertorous tones to one and all: “Young…
LOUISA May Alcott’s claim to a December slot on the theatrical calendar rests with the titular March girls’ yearnings for fine dresses and Christmas presents instead of the lives they are living in 1860s Massachusetts, while their newly-penurious father is off fighting in the four-year American Civil War. It was the perfect choice for Salisbury’s…
THE prolific American writer Jack Sharkey first published The Murder Room in 1977, and now, almost 40 years on, Yeovil’s Civic Players have brought it to their avid audience. It should have happened back in 2020, but the pandemic got in the way, just weeks before the opening night. Thankfully, director Andrew Meadows and his…
BACK in 2018, Salisbury Playhouse came up with a national award-winning version of Beauty and the Beast, which remains in my memory as the finest new pantomime version of a favourite story ever – and I really have been to a few hundred pantos in my time – oh yes I have! Now, after all…
THERE’s just a handful of seats available at performances of A Christmas Carol – the Musical at Frome’s Merlin Theatre, starting on Friday 6th December. After last year’s sell out production of ELF, the ambitious and enterprising Merlin Theatre Productions company has chosen the Broadway version of the Dickens classic for its 2024 show, and…
IF you really can’t hack the Behind You and Oh No She Isn’t Christmas entertainment predictability, Bath Theatre Royal’s Ustinov studio has the perfect amtidote to panto-mania with a new production of Jeeves Takes Charge, running from Friday 6th December to Saturday 4th January. Sam Harrison plays all 22 roles in this clever solo retelling…
THE long and complicated journey of an ancient violin continues – this week Lev’s Violin (the instrument and its story) is in Dorset for dates with Artsreach, including Shipton Gorge village hall on Thursday 5th December, West Stafford hall on Friday 6th and Chetnole village hall on Saturday 7th, all starting at 7.30pm. Former bandmates…
THE latest manifestation of the Sasha Regan company’s hilariously entertaining all-male Pirates is in Bath this week, complete with its almost-all-new cast of daughters, policemen and gentlemen of the sea. The 17-strong company, along with the phenomenal Giannis Giannopoulos at the piano, bring out all of WS Gilbert’s satire and invention, with (as is traditional) a…