THERE’S little enough outright joy in the world these days, so thanks to Sir Matthew Bourne for providing a large slice with his Early Adventures. Three of the shows that set the language, style and pace for Bourne’s triumphant career have been revived for a tour that started at Bath before travelling the UK and…
THE drama students at Gillingham School pull off a coup this week, presenting the regional premiere of a recent musical about US outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Frank Wildhorn, Don Black and Ivan Menchell’s 2009 version of the story is apparently due for a West End opening this autumn, so North Dorset audiences have…
IT will be a long time before I forget the Sheriff of Nottingham’s Ming the Merciless facial hair or the wardrobe malfunction during Dame Winnie Widebottom’s strip at the 2017 Tisbury Arts Group pantomime. They were the highlights of the hilarious Ben Crocker version of Robin Hood and the Babes in the Wood, directed by…
WE have such a damaged, tragic image of Baghdad these days that it is good to be reminded that once it was a city of dreamers, poets and story-tellers, glittering minarets, camel caravans bearing the riches of the Silk Road and turbanned merchants in swirling robes … the land of the Sultan and Scheherazade and…
PICTURE pink mist … tiny droplets of blood and flesh filling the air … shot to smithereens, we used to say. The definition of the title doesn’t come until late on in poet, novelist, presenter and teacher Owen Sheers’ first play, currently back where it started at Bristol Old Vic for a third time, at…
SOON after my sixth birthday, way back in the year when Prince Charles was invested as the Prince of Wales and when the first decimal coins were in circulation, I was taken to the old cinema in Shaftesbury, with mum, dad, and four-year-old sister, to watch a magical film, where a car flew and people…
Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2 Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Amyn Merchant Kirill Karabits: Conductor Valeriy Sokolov: Violin DURING his time at the helm of the BSO, we have seen Kirill Karabits expand his repertoire enormously, but conducting the works of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, the twin giants of Soviet-era Russian music, has…
HIJINX is a professional theatre company based at the Wales Millennium Centre. What makes them just a bit different is that their productions involve actors with learning difficulties working alongside those who face no such challenges; they pioneer, produce and promote inclusive theatre, making much use of the skills and raw talent of people who…
WILLIAM Hooker Gillette was America’s foremost actor-manager at the turn of the last century, and when Arthur Conan Doyle was looking to extend his own income from Sherlock Holmes by transferring him to the stage, Gillette was an obvious choice for a collaboration, as writer and actor. The resulting play, Sherlock Holmes, ran for many…
THE revolving set for the Regent’s Park Theatre production of Simon Reade’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s best-loved book might look a little like the ironwork of New Orleans rather than Regency rural England, but it cleverly frames the action in this beautifully choreographed show. Neither as deconstructed as the current Jane Eyre tour, nor conventionally…