MAGIC can happen when the stars align, the gods unite and the time is right. That fickle chance beamed down on King Street in Bristol at the moment when writer Max Porter, director Nancy Medina, adaptor Bea Roberts and designer Rebecca Jane Wood agreed to adapt Porter’s 2019 book for the stage. The result is…
EDWARD Bond described his 1973 play The Sea as a tragicomedy, and certainly, in Jonathan Munby’s new production for Bath Theatre Royal, there are strong elements of both the epically tragic and the hilariously comedic. And there are elements of lots of other theatrical tropes, too. The puzzled audience can look out for moments of…
ADAM Lanfranchi has a theory about Samuel Beckett’s legendary absurdist play Waiting for Godot – that attempting a definitive explanation is a mug’s game. So when the chance came to direct the play for Street’s Strode Theatre, Adam chose his own cast from actors from around the region, gave them the scripts and sent them…
IF there’s one thing we all need in these difficult days, it’s a bit of warming comfort – and that is just what the members of Yeovil Amateur Operatic Society are offering in Sherborne this week. The venerable society makes its first foray out of the home town in 124 years, into the 218 seater…
ANY fans of Natalie Haynes will have a clear comedic knowledge of those old Greek Gods sitting on Mount Olympus and changing themselves into various more or less attractive birds and insects in order to seduce unsuspecting human women. Their antics come to hilarious life by courtesy of Jacques Offenbach in his operetta Orpheus in…
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…