STEPHEN King’s novella, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, inspired by Tolstoy’s 1872 story God Sees the Truth But Waits, was first published in 1982. Twelve years later the movie The Shawshank Redemption hit the screens, and, after a slow start, is now regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. Now, fans…
WHAT is the first thing you say to a taxi driver when you get in his (it usually is a man) cab? Chances are that it wouldn’t be “Do you believe in God?” So the taxi driver is immediately on the wrong foot. How on earth do you answer that? And where are you supposed…
THE 250th anniversary production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s immortal comedy The Rivals, sub-titled A Trip to Bath, comes “home” to the Theatre Royal as part of its 2026 tour. The 23-year-old Sheridan was catapulted to success by the play, which held a mirror up to the preposterous antics of his day. So it is no…
LEWIS Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is one of the greatest works of English literature – beautifully, poetically written, full of vivid and unconventional characters, jam-packed with imaginative touches and extraordinary events, somewhere between a rainbow dream and a fever-nightmare, and memorably illustrated, so that we all know what the White Rabbit or the Cheshire Cat…
THERE are dozens of suggestions as to where the saying ‘Once seen never forgotten’ comes from, but which ever one you subscribe to, the truth of the saying throws up a great problem for director Matthew Dunster as he brings Danny Robins’ thriller out on a tour to areas where it has already been seen….
HOWARD Coggins was a comic genius, a versatile actor with a vivid, surreal imagination, and in their company Living Spit, he and Stu McLoughlin created something uniquely funny, charming, wacky and endlessly entertaining – reinventing history with their two-person take on the lives of Henry VIII or Elizabeth I, telling the story of real life…
SOHO legend Jeffrey Bernard, drinker, womaniser, racing fanatic, writer and raconteur, was still alive when Keith Waterhouse’s play about his life made its way to the London stage, with the even-more-famous Peter O’Toole in the title role. And he lived for another eight years, flying in the face of medical wisdom and what seemed like…
WHY does this romanticised telling of the short, highly successful life of American rock’n’roll legend Buddy Holly – it only lasted around three years before he was tragedy killed aged 22 in and air crash – conjure up images of TV’s The Good Old Days from the City Varieties Music Hall, Leeds? The answer lies…
IN 1880, a famous (and frequently censored) Italian political satirist, Carlo Collodi, created a story about a poor woodcarver who made a wooden boy puppet as a companion for his old age. That puppet, Pinocchio, wanted to be a real boy, but he had to contend with a nose that grew every time he told a…
ALL I want for Christmas is … a good murder mystery! And if that comes with a generous dose of laughter all the better. Strange creatures that we are, there is apparently nothing we enjoy more than dead bodies piling up in a splendid country house, crumbling castle or remote island hideaway. Agatha Christie was…