THIS is a big year for Shakespeare – and many of the 400th anniversary celebrations involve the Scottish Play, a timely choice. Personally we’re rather in danger of being Macbethed-out with another still to come at Shakespeare’s Globe, but first it’s Verdi and the very different stagings possible at Iford’s magical but tiny cloister and Dorset…

MIKE Leigh’s savagely funny play Abigail’s Party, set in London suburbia in 1977, might be a period piece but it’s as hilariously fresh as ever, as Motcombe Community Players proved to two sell-out audiences at the Village Hall. Five people get together for drinks and nibbles, while the 15-year-old daughter of one of them has…

FIFTY two years after its opening, Brownsea Open Air Theatre celebrates the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death with its first performance of one of his earliest plays, the difficult Two Gentlemen. It sets the scene for many of its successors, with snatches of the story reappearing in many guises, and also introduces its audiences to…

WHEN Tchaikovsky decided to adapt Pushkin’s beloved verse novel Eugene Onegin, it gave him not only an opera but a ballet, both of which continue to move, enthral and delight audiences the world over. The opera has provided Dorset Opera Festival with its finest moment at Blandford, bringing tears and cheers from the packed Coade…

THE Americana-country scene, based in Nashville Tennessee, spawns a seemingly endless supply of singer-songwriters, many of whom tour the UK visiting everything from the stadium circuit to county and town-fringe pubs as they make their names. Some, like Gretchen Peters, made an immediate hit with British audiences who have remained faithful over the years. She’s…

THIS has been the most extraordinary few weeks, and really nothing should surprise, but when Donald Trump’s wig and Theresa May’s outfit turn up on the same stage in Yeovil, it might be a bit of a shock. However, with the versatile Swan Theatre company and a play by David Tristram, anything might happen. Tristram…

TERENCE Rattigan is best known for his dramas of difficult lives, so a comedy is something of a surprise … and a delightful one. While the Sun Shines, the second play in the Bath Theatre Royal summer season, is directed by Christopher Luscombe, and runs until 30th July. First performed in London in 1943 it…

LOSS – lost love, death or separation – is a powerful theme, expressed with explosive physicality in Tim Podesta’s Architecture of Loss, at Ballet Under The Stars, with Covent Garden Dance. Mara Galeazzi, former principal dancer and guest artist of the Royal Ballet and a favourite with Hatch regulars, was the soloist in this short,…

THERE are so many good ideas in Barry Matthews-Keel’s production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy a Midsummer Night’s Dream, on stage at the Studio Theatre in Ashley Road, Salisbury until 23rd July. It starts in total darkness, and as the light comes up a silhouette begins a slow martial dance. We discover that she is Hippolyta,…

YOU meet up with somebody you thought you might be in love with, some time after they have apparently dumped you (or at least failed to contact you, as they promised, after a night that you will never forget). But you both want to keep talking, even if it is awkward and neither of you…