WRITER Ed Edwards’ views on why the social groupings becoming addicted to hard drugs has changed from a handful of well-heeled upper-class people. Go back before the swinging sixties and the figure for the number of addicts in this country was officially under 5,000, nearly all from that higher social and income bracket. With the…
THE big problem with Sleeping Beauty is that it is a story that ends too soon – as a pantomime, the big scene is the one where Princess Aurora pricks her finger on the spinning wheel brought to the palace by the wicked fairy Carabosse, and the Fairy Queen saves the day by putting everyone…
ANYONE who was lucky enough to see Tracie Bennett in the National Theatre’s brilliant production of Follies will know that this is a woman who can carry a whole show. Her character, Carlotta, was not one of the four principals, but her performance of I’m Still Here, one of Follies’ big numbers, was an absolute…
YASMINA Reza doesn’t like her plays being called comedies – she thinks they are tragedies. But she does accept that they are funny. God of Carnage is both. It is very, very funny. It is also very sad. Lindsay Posner’s brilliantly directed Bath Theatre Royal production captures both aspects. We laugh loudly and frequently at the…
NICK Payne’s extraordinary play Constellations has its south west premiere at Yeovil’s Swan Theatre. It’s an intense two-hander that observes a relationship from the road(s) less travelled. And the premise is that every single move we make is predetermined, and may be almost replicated in alternative universes. Marianne and Roland meet – many times over,…
aWHY do we like to be frightened? What is it that makes horror films so appealing? Why do we love to gather round the fireside and have our blood chilled by stories of haunted houses, headless knights and grey ladies ceaselessly pacing lonely battlements? You might say, we live in comfortable times and we need…
IN the 40 years since it first came into existence in Cornwall, still its home base, Kneehigh Theatre has steadily raised the bar in its creation of distinctive anarchic theatrical presentations. I doubt that they have ever found a space better suited to one of their productions that this stone-built former factory in one of…
WHEN the thunder cracked and rumbled over the Stourhead gardens, we initially thought it was part of the spectacular soundscape that accompanies the Christmas light show at the famous National Trust gardens. A few minutes later, the storm started – hail like I have never experienced, streaming out of the sky in an impenetrable ice curtain….
ONE of the most enchanting of this excellent season of Christmas shows was at Salisbury’s Medieval Hall on 21st December, when Crescendo Concerts for Kids brought their new version of The Nutcracker to the Cathedral Close. The show, written by Petra Schofield, follows the adventures of two sisters leaving the house of a beloved grandmother…
A YOUNG singer stepped into the breach, at less than 24 hours notice, to sing the bass role in Haydn’s Nelson Mass, the main work in Trowbridge Philharmonic Choir’s Christmas music at St James’s Church. Simeon Coton was at university in Cheltenham when he got the call, at 10.30 at night, to ask if he…