The Arts Section

Outside Edge, Studio Theatre, Salisbury

WATCHING Richard Harris’s cricketing farce Outside Edge 47 years after its premiere, and holding a programme that contains the message “Please be aware that Outside Edge is a classic late 20th-century comedy which reflects the language and attitudes of its time. Some audience members may find this content offensive,” I found myself asking exactly what…

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Can Brazil nuts save the rainforest

PROFESSOR Sir Ghillean Prance, the former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, is one of the world’s leading tropical botanists and rainforest explorers. He is also the founder of Dorset’s Help Our Planet project and HOP talks. On Thursday 26th March he will be talking at Sladers Yard gallery, West Bay, about Brazil…

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Looking back, looking ahead – at Dorchester

DORSET’s county town has many things going for it, but theatrically it is a national record-breaker. There have been seven community plays and now Dorchester Community Plays Association is looking forward to an eighth. Meanwhile, there is a nostalgic weekend ahead, from 27th to 29th March, with a look back at the fifth community play,…

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Let there be light

WE wouldn’t exist without the sun – but how much do most of us know about it? Installation artist Luke Jerram asks visitors to come and discover the bright star that gives us light and life in his new touring project, Helios, which will be at Dorchester Corn Exchange until Monday 6th April. Helios, like…

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Pipeline chosen for national tour

SOUTH West-based theatre company Pipeline has been awarded funding to develop a new play, George and the Drag Queen, for a national tour this autumn. The company has been commissioned to develop the project by the Create Tour Connect partnership. The Falmouth-based company won the commission after a competitive application process. The selection process for…

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A pioneer of modern British art

ROGER Fry, painter and member of the Bloomsbury Group, is celebrated in a new exhibition at the Museum of Somerset,Taunton, on until 4th July. A Life in Art: Roger Fry is a major new exhibition exploring the life, work and influence of one of the most important figures in 20th century British art. The exhibition…

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Former Wells Cathedral scholars return for Bach masterpiece

TWO former pupils of Wells Cathedral School return to Wells Cathedral on Friday 27th March to take part in a performance of Bach’s masterpiece, the St Matthew Passion, with the Armonico choir and baroque orchestra. The ensembles are conducted by their founder Christopher Monks. He and tenor soloist Nathan Vale were organ and choral scholars…

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Fiddler on the Roof, YAOS, Westlands, Yeovil

IN the years since I last saw Fiddler on the Roof – which was the memorable Chichester Festival production with Omid Djalili as Tevya and Tracy-Ann Oberman as Golde – the world has been turned upside down. That poignant but funny show, with its barn-storming central performance, seemed to end on a note of hope,…

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Pressure, Swan Theatre, Yeovil

WE Brits talk about the weather all the time. Will it be sunny for the weekend, the wedding, the village fete, the cricket …? Will there be enough rain for the crops? You name it, whatever we are planning to do, we want to know what the weather will be. The Met Office is pretty…

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