MANY consider the 1985 film Back to the Future the greatest, and certainly one of the most successful, films of that genre ever made. With music from the 1950s (The Power of Love, Johnny B Goode, Earth Angel, Back in Time) to help accommodate the story going back to that period, the film – and…
SIXTEEN years ago, with then-heartthrob Colin Firth doing his royal bit, and “newcomer” Geoffrey Rush exciting the critics, Tom Hooper’s film of David Seidler’s script The King’s Speech won 12 Oscar nominations and huge international acclaim. Two years later Seidler’s original script was staged at the Yvonne Arnaud in Guildford, and at Wyndhams in London….
Ten little soldier boys went out to dine, One choked his little self and then there were nine … There are many versions of this rhyme, some now consigned to history because of their racist connotations, but the theme is always the same – you start off with ten and you end with none. How…
WE live in a selfish era, when it is difficult to persuade someone to become an officer of a society unless there is a large honorarium on offer. If you go back a couple of generations, especially in a small community, you would find people only to happy to take up such posts. I once…
IF you think of Clarks of Street, the first thing that comes to mind will be shoes – but there is so much more to the story of this family and the Somerset village where they have lived and worked for centuries. From prehistory to contemporary art, the Shoemakers Museum tells the story of a…
IF you travel by train in an urban area you can see into people’s back gardens, terraces, even kitchens, get a fleeting glimpse of their lives and perhaps occasionally imagine something about them. Rachel travels by the same train into London every day for work; while the train is running at a slower speed she…
SHIRLEY Jackson’s book The Haunting of Hill House, published in 1959, has been described as the greatest horror story ever, so it’s no surprise it has seen several stage and two screen adaptations. Now the book has been adapted by Stef Smith, for a new theatrical version, designed by Ti Green and directed by Martin…
It’s nearly 400 miles (as the crow flies) from Marlborough in Wiltshire to Pitlochry in Scotland, so perhaps a surprise to find actor Sir Simon Russell Beale and director Ben Occhipinti, both with strong links to Salisbury and resident in Wiltshire, brought together in the Perthshire highlands in the service of Liberace, 20th century superstar…
THE professional commercial theatres in Bristol (the Hippodrome, Weston-super-Mare (the Playhouse) and Bath Theatre Royal all open their doors to productions by local amateur companies. Weston Operatic Society, founded in 1908 and the oldest of the local clubs, had to wait until a change of management in 2008 before they could establish themselves as regular…
A much-respected local music critic, with a deep knowledge of opera and classical music, had one great blind spot – he hated Mozart’s music, one his operas, Don Giovanni in particular. Despite the fact that ever since its first, rapturously received 1787 production in Prague, it has been constantly named as one of the worlds…