ARTWORKS by members of an international artists’ community, who are focusing on ways in which we exploit and nurture the earth’s resources, will be at Amanda Wallwork’s studio on the top floor of The Old Timber Yard, West Bay, over the weekends Friday 31st May to Sunday 2nd June and Friday 7th to Sunday 9th…
SEAHORSES are enchanting, magical creatures – but they are vulnerable to many forces, human and natural. There is an important but fragile population ion Britain’s two native seahorse species – the spiny and short snouted seahorse – in the Studland seagrass meadow, which itself is a threatened habitat. The meadow is a voluntary no-anchor zone…
THE historic setting of Somerset Rural Life Museum at Glastonbury, with the ancient tithe barn, is the setting for a showcase of artwork by 13 printmakers living and working in Somerset, from 25th May to 1st September. Somerset Printmakers are a group of professional artists dedicated to creating original prints and pushing the boundaries of…
DAVID Grieg’s new “play with songs,” Midsummer, made a triumphant premiere at Colchester’s Mercury Theatre, and now plays at the Barn at Cirencester until late June. I can’t urge you enough to go and see it. Musicals are strange things these days. Some of them gain immediate cult status and continue for season after season…
ORLANDO is a figure from distant myths and epics, a source of creative inspiration and fascination – never more so than in Virginia Woolf’s extraordinary novel, Orlando: A Biography, which was the key focus for a Bath Festival concert featuring guitarist Sean Shibe and mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovaska. One of Virginia Woolf’s most popular novels, Orlando…
YANN Martel’s magic-realist philosophical story Life of Pi, winner of the Man Booker prize in 2002, is all about a boy from Pondicherry, named Piscine (which he has abbreviated to Pi), brought up in a zoo, with his family and other animals escaping violent uprisings on a Japanese ship that goes down in a storm…
BATH Festival has always had music at its heart, with performances by many of the world’s leading soloists, ensembles and orchestras, including some of the finest interpreters of early music. This year’s festival, running to 26th May, saw the Bath debut of Stile Antico, a 12-strong a cappella ensemble dedicated to performing the vocal music…
WASSAIL, known as Somerset’s resident theatre company, is back with a bang (or at least a strawberry pavlova) in a new show called Birthday Day, currently touring until the beginning of September. Based on a short story by company founder Nick White, it does what Wassail does best – get into the heart of the…
ITALIAN playwright Carlo Goldoni is best known now for his The Servant of Two Masters, written in 1745 and adapted for a 21st century audience as One Man, Two Guvnors by Richard Bean in 2011 and catapulting James Corden into international success. The Venetian lawyer was a prolific writer, and in 1761 he wrote what…
TERENCE Rattigan was the star playwright of the 40s and 50s, until the new wave kitchen sink writers shot him from the firmament, after which he was considered dated, mannered, posh and irrelevant. Recently, a few directors have rediscovered his works and revelatory productions have been mounted. Lindsay Posner’s current production at Bath’s Ustinov Studio,…