A COUPLE of “interfering missionaries,” one armed with an “incorruptible Kodak,” revealed one of the worst stories of colonial barbarity – the slavery, torture, massacres and shocking corruption of the Belgian rule over the Congo. Alice Seeley Harris, the “meddlesome missionary” whose shocking photographs revealed the extent of the cruelty and horrors of the Belgian occupation,…
BETHANY Heath is now a veteran of the Frome Festival, after a Peter Shaffer for Frome Drama and a stint as a wife of Henry VIII last year. For the 2018 event she took the brave step of an (almost) solo show, performed at in the intimate Three Swans, packed to the gunwales on a…
SOME ballets send you out of the theatre almost breathless and tingling with excitement, the combination of music and dancing making you want to join in and share the stage with those involved with the production. That however was never the intention of Frederick Ashton when he, against some opposition, decided to choreograph an entirely…
AN opera evening at Herrison Hall, Charlton Down, put on by the Artsreach rural arts touring charity, went with a pop and a fizz as the audience enjoyed a double bill of Mozart one-act operas and a chance to taste Dorset’s newest sparkling wine. This was the second venture into opera for Artsreach, following the…
THE life of Dusty Springfield, hailed as Britain’s greatest female pop singer, was ripe for transformation into a stage show, and now Jonathan Harvey and Maria Friedman have done it, sensationally. Opening at Bath Theatre Royal until 7th July before a brief UK tour, it should be headed straight for a West End theatre and…
IN the early years of the 19th century, the people of Dorset lived in fear of invasion – Napoleon’s forces were just across the Channel and people in Weymouth and along the coast were preparing for the imminent arrival of Boney’s battle-hardened army. First in the line of defence, if the navy – under its…
THE universal agreement that Shakespeare’s themes are timeless has been interpreted as carte blanche for modernisations and period swaps, but it’s perhaps never been more effectively done than in the current Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory production, on stage at the Ustinov Studio in Bath until 21st July. The company, started by Andrew Hilton in…
HANDEL’S opera Partenope, first seen in 1730 and written in English, is one of the barmiest of the 55 he wrote, but perhaps ideal for the “me too” year. Performed by Iford Opera accompanied by Contraband, under the direction of Christopher Bucknall, it’s the story of the powerful and adventurous queen of Naples and her…
THE casting of Jamie Beddard, an actor who suffers from cerebral palsy, in the role of John Merrick The Elephant Man, has rather tended to overshadow this production of Bernard Pomerace’s stage interpretation of the tragic life of a man whose severe facial and body deformities made him a social outcast. A severe critic of…
JUST as the temperatures soar and the Engerland team is still in the world cup, pubs are running out of beer – so audiences as the touring production of Whisky Galore will understand even more keenly the anguish felt by Todday islanders when the whisky ran out in 1941. It was at that time that…