HOW many actors does it take to perform Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, dramatis personae of 15 plus extra? The answer is five – and you hardly miss a thing. The Festival Players, formed in 1986 and an all-male troupe since 2014, has chosen the hilarious play of identical twins, mistaken identities, lost love and…
WHEN Laura Wade decided to rework W Somerset Maughan’s highly successful 1926 play The Constant Wife and look at the story through modern eyes, whilst keeping the same storyline she based her script on Maughan’s concept rather than using the original text. Lyric Hammersmith’s associate director Nicholai La Barrie, who directs this joint production with…
A RARELY performed Noel Coward comedy is coming to Bath Theatre Royal – The Marquise, starring Juliet Aubrey, Simon Shepherd and Tristan Gemmill, is on a national tour and will be at Bath from Tuesday 16th to Saturday 20th June. This romantic comedy, originally set in 18th-century France and now given a 1930s updating, was…
BADGER’S Drift will get a bit of a break from homicide when the curtain comes down on Midsomer Murders at Bath on Saturday 14th June – but not for long. The success of this first staging of the popular TV series on its opening UK tour, which started in November 2025, means it has 14 more…
CRIME and punishment, deportation and the consequences of artistic deprivation are all big news at the moment, in a way they perhaps weren’t in 1991 when Timberlake Wertenbaker wrote her iconic political drama Our Country’s Good. She was inspired by visits to Wormwood Scrubs prison, and the effects that exposure to theatre had on long-term…
WHEN I told a friend that I was going to see a show called We Will Rock You, a jukebox musical based around the music of Queen, they replied “Can’t be done”. When I asked why, they said “Because Freddy Mercury sang all of Queen’s songs and, as you can tell by the lack of…
SIX adult performers Richard Hurst, Tessa Kadler, Rebecca Thornhiil, Adam Stafford, Ryan Lay, and Esther Niles brought a considerable amount of dramatic, vocal and dance talent to the roles of (respectively) Miss Trunchbull, Miss Honey, Mrs and Mr Wormwood, Rudolpho and Mrs Phelps, and thoroughly deserved the warm reception they received when taking their final…
JONATHAN Lynn’s “final chapter” in the story of Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby, now simply titled I’m Sorry, Prime Minister, is back in Bath this week, as part of a summer national tour. Bringing the two old adversaries from the ever-popular TV sitcom up to date, the play opened in Cirencester in 2023. The…
THE Irish seem to have a closer relationship with the mystical, the spiritual … the “other side” than many nations. All the Celtic peoples have their mystical side but the Irish have held on to their mythology more, perhaps because the Romans never conquered them. Maggie O’Farrell was born in Coleraine, in Co Londonderry, and…
SITTING in a darkened room, where the preparation for an act of religious worship is mixed with the visceral fear of discovery, suddenly there’s a pounding at the door … This is a sensation that those who practise banned religions have known for millennia, often with violent, sometimes fatal, consequences. We are warlike animals and…