BOURNEMOUTH Symphony Orchestra regularly includes music with a lighter touch in its programmes, alongside mainstream and more serious works. John Williams Blockbusters comes to Bristol Beacon on 27th March, Southampton’s Mayflower Theatre, on 29th March. The series of concerts features music from some of the greatest blockbuster films of the past 40 or so years,…
IF you loved Game of Thrones – or maybe never saw it but still couldn’t escape its omnipresence – don’t miss A&E Comedy’s brilliant spoof, Game of Crones, making its last appearance in the south west at Exeter’s Phoenix arts centre on Wednesday 25th March. Sharpen your swords and fill your goblets – the dragons…
WHAT do you do if your cinema is planning to show all three Lord of the Rings films in one epic screening – but you only have the sound-tracks? Find out at at Exeter’s Northcott Theatre on Monday 23rd March. You improvise. All three parts of the saga – all those hobbits and heroes, elves…
SHAFTESBURY bookshop FOLDE Dorset, which specialises in nature writing, has been named as the best independent book retailer in the South West for a second time, just two years after taking the regional prize in 2024. Affectionately known as The Nibbies, the awards are organised by The Bookseller magazine and judged by a prestigious panel…
RICHARD Harris’s comedy Outside Edge is next on stage at Studio Theatre’s base in Ashley Road, Salisbury, from 23rd to 28th March. Directed by Colin Hayman, this very English story is all about summer, the sound of leather on willow, cricket teas, assembling a team each week, the constant threat of rain, and of course,…
A WEST Dorset choir specialising in music that Thomas Hardy sang has just launched a new website and is keen to attract more singers and instrumentalists to join. Broadwindsor Gallery Quire is a community ensemble dedicated to exploring and performing the rich tradition of West Gallery music – vibrant hymns and anthems that once filled…
WHEN audiences gather for Hurn Court Opera’s La Traviata on 18th April at the Coade Hall at Bryanston School and on 20th at Winchester Theatre Royal, they will see striking and original costumes designed by students at Arts University Bournemouth. The new creative partnership between the opera company, a Dorset-based arts charity and the theatre…
TORBEN Betts’ latest comedy thriller, Murder at Midnight, is a clever, often hilarious, conflation of Jacobean revenge tragedies with all their gory relish and 21st century attitudes. It all starts as the familiarly-suited SOCOs and an insensitive Met cop chat over the blood-bath left in an Kent super-home when the bodies have been removed. It’s…
PHOTOGRAPHER Lucy Sewill has exhibited and published widely and has work in the National Portrait Gallery. Her portraits of leading actresses are currently on show at Dorset Museum and Art Gallery in Dorchester, until 28th April. Visible Women is a striking and timely series including Juliet Stevenson, Dame Harriet Walter, Dame Meera Syal, Julie Graham,…
ROBERT Louis Stevenson spent some years living in Westbourne, then an affluent suburb of Bournemouth, and it was here that he wrote the novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. So it is appropriate for the town’s Palace Court Theatre to be the venue for a striking reimagining of this famous thriller,…