THE hilariously funny, cuddly, wry and inspired Howard Coggins, best known in the south west as co-founder of Living Spit and nationally for his Lottery adverts, has died at the age of 52. He was diagnosed with cancer late in 2022. Frustrated with playing bit parts in other people’s shows, Howard and Stu McLoughlin started…
PETER Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus opens in Vienna 200 years ago, as court composer Antonio Salieri is committed to an asylum, where his ravings about his murder of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, decades earlier, are overheard by his incredulous attendants. It continues in flashback to episodes in the period from 1781 to 1791. It has been…
I FIRST saw The Mousetrap during its 15th year in London’s West End, having come to what seemed a logical conclusion that this simple little Whodunit could not possible last much longer in the capital. Looking around a near-capacity house on the play’s opening night at Weston-super-Mare’s Playhouse Theatre, and observing the wide age range…
THE job of following on from a very successful person or event in entertainment or sport is often a poisoned chalice. Sequels can be and often are a great let-down. Philip King and Falkland L Carey’s Watch It Sailor, which followed their runaway success with Sailor Beware, was decidedly disappointing. Films and TV are littered…
WHEN artist Alexander Hollweg and his family moved from London to Exmoor 40 years ago, he said they “sold a house and bought a way of life”. A new exhibition at the Museum of Somerset in Taunton celebrates his Journey in Art, with paintings and sculptures from throughout the six decades of his career. The…
THE November event in the Guardians of Martock Church programme is a talk rather than a concert, looking at life on the Channel Island of Jersey during the Nazi occupation in the Second World War. The talk is at the Martock Fellowship Hall on Thursday 16th November at 2pm. The Nazi occupation of the Channel…
FIRST generation farmer, chef and internet star, Dorset-based Julius Roberts comes to the Butterfly House at Castle Gardens at Sherborne on Wednesday 8th November at 7pm to talk about his newly published, first book, The Farm Table at Castle Gardens The event is being held to conjunction with Winstone’s Bookshop in Sherborne, and will include…
FRANK Wedekind’s semi-autobiographical play Spring Awakenings, written when he was in his mid-20s, has become a popular performance piece for drama students and young actors in recent years, underlining the message that whoever you love or however you love is acceptable. The play, which has been censored and suppressed in many societies, is a satirical…
IN the days before Strictly Come Dancing when the Frank and Peggy Spencer Formation Team from Penge were top dogs in the even-longer-running Come Dancing on television and Victor Silvester was teaching people to dance on radio to his strict tempo Ballroom Orchestra, you never heard the spoken word or a singer intrude on the…
IT was once said about builders that all they have to do was see was a patch of green grass and they would immediately want to put a house on it. The same sort of thing can be said about modern theatre impresarios – one viewing of a successful film, romance, drama or comedy, and…