WATCHING Galina Ulanova dance the dying swan when in the 1960s the Bolshoi Ballet made a surprise visit to the Bristol Hippodrome and presented a programme of individual party pieces, was one of those magical never-to-be-forgotten theatrical moments. All future ballerinas have had to do battle with that memory when they come to the poignant…
PIANIST Stephen Beville comes to Shute in East Devon for a recital at St Michael’s Church, on Friday 14th March, at 7.30pm, part of the continuing Shute Festival Acclaimed in 2010 by the Frankfurter Neue Press as “one of the most talented young musicians to emerge from the UK,” Stephen Beville is a pianist and…
ONE of the less feeble excuses I have made to friends and family who have suggested that I write my reminiscences of a war and post-war childhood, is that to do so I would show the faults of a father who fought hard all his life to take care of my mother and I, and give…
THERE will be a warm welcome for Scottish pianist Alasdair Beatson when he returns to Dorset and Somerset for the March series of Concerts in the West, starting as always with the coffee concert at Bridport Arts Centre, on Friday 14th at 11.30am. The tour continues that evening at Ilminster Arts Centre at 7.30, and…
JACK Dickson, a member of the art department at Bryanston School, Blandford, was featured on a recent edition of Bill Bailey’s BBC series Extraordinary Portraits. The programme featured Jack’s portrait of a remarkable, life-saving, railway worker, Rizwan Javed. East Londoner Rizwan, who works for London Underground, has saved 29 people from taking their own lives…
DORCHESTER has a rich history, and one of its most recent important contributions not only to the town, county and country has been its community plays. It has staged seven – the greatest number of community plays anywhere in the world. The most recent, Spinning the Moon, was due in 2020 and was scuppered by…
EAST Devon’s Shute Festival continues its series of inspiring talks on 12th March at the Peek Chapel in Pound Street, Lyme Regis, with Julia Hailes, ambassador for the Rainforest Trust. She has recently returned from the Guyanas – British Guiana (as it was), Suriname and French Guiana – where the forests still stand, 83.5%, 93%…
ALFRED Hitchcock’s film version of John Buchan’s 1915 novel is widely regarded as one of the greatest movies of all time, and every subsequent iteration is judged by this 90-year-old behemoth. So perhaps it is no surprise that a member of the audience, leaving Salisbury Playhouse’s terrific new production of the Patrick Barlow four-handed version…
SHAKESPEARE is back at Bedminster’s Tobacco Factory, in a stunning new production by Heidi Vaughan, the venue’s artistic director and CEO. It seems a long time since the company Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory was last performing on the cigar packing room floor of the former Wills Factory. Andrew Hilton’s company ran for 20 years…
THERE was a running joke in my family, and the younger members regularly pulled my maternal grandfather’s leg, that as a lifelong trade unionist he was still fighting the General Strike 50 years after the event. Looking at Alan Bleasdale’s Boys from the Blackstuff, 40 years after it first appeared on BBC 2, adapted for…