WE live in difficult times, when it often seems as though common sense and human decency are concepts of the past. Dawn King’s award winning play Foxfinder, set in a not-too-distant future, is a frightening glimpse at where we might be headed in this time of faux-scientific governmental advice and “reality” star world leaders. In…
SHERIDAN’S immortal comedy The Rivals, set “down the road” in Bath in the 1770s, is the perfect play for Bristol’s Old Vic, which opened just a few years before the play’s premiere. Chosen as part of the Bristol theatre’s 250th anniversary season, it has been revived in a co-production with the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow…
WHAT better way to spend a late summer Sunday afternoon than trundling round the Somerset lanes on a horse-drawn charabanc, singing The Seeds of Love – the very song that inspired Cecil Sharp to begin his famous collection of English folk song. It was the last of four site-specific performances by the enterprising Wassail Theatre,…
NIGHT Must Fall, by Emlyn Williams, is one of the classic British thrillers, a real chiller that builds and builds until the tension is almost palpable. It is the story of an unpleasant old woman, Mrs Bramson, who lives at Forest Corner, a house in the woods, with her frustrated and poor niece Olivia as…
STEPHEN Jeffreys’ play The Libertine, the scurrilous story of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, has its first major revival in a production by Terry Johnson, now on stage in Bath before a season at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket from 22nd September to 3rd December. Set in the court of Charles II, it’s the story of…
IT wasn’t the hills that were alive in Bristol last night as much as the Hippodrome, as song after song in The Sound of Music had people making almost as much noise off stage as on. In most musicals there are a few hits, a few standards that have made their way into the Great…
IBSEN’S epic play Peer Gynt, based on a Norwegian folk tale, has been described as “the story of a life based on procrastination and avoidance” and certainly introduces its audience to an anti-hero. At Salisbury, the Youth Theatre director Dave Orme saw it as a chance to create a modern play for a large cast…
OPERA in Oborne returned with sell-out performances of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in St Cuthbert’s Church in the picturesque little village near Sherborne. There were enthusiastic audiences for the Mozart on the Friday and Saturday, with a cast of young professional singers from Latvia, the US, France and the UK. On the Sunday the…
ALAN Ayckbourn loves a good idea, such as playing with location, as in RolePlay, a former choice by Dramatic Productions one of three otherwise-unrelated plays set in the same Docklands apartment, or with character, as in last year’s new work Roundelay with five main characters in their own half-hour play, whilst all featuring in the…
IT’S quite a coup for Bath Theatre Royal to get Phill Jupitus in his first Shakespearean role for the summer season, but in Laurence Boswell’s stylish production the charismatic comedian is one of a strong ensemble rather than the star turn. New audiences, drawn by the promise of the Jupitus Bottom, walk into the beautiful…