POLINA Kalinina’s terrifying, passionate and heartbreaking production of Romeo and Juliet, for Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, has introduced a new element to the company which has been presenting plays at the former cigar packing factory in Bedminster every spring for the past 16 years. Company founder Andrew Hilton invited the rising star director to…
KNEEHIGH’S brilliant new adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s classic Rebecca, at Bath until 14th March, is a perfect illustration of how the art and craft of live theatre can come together to leapfrog expectations and make unforgettable magic. The novel was published in 1938, followed two years later by the Hitchcock film whose images were…
PLAYWRIGHT Benedict Barrett’s play The Biscuit Tin was premiered this week in Salisbury by the Studio Youth Theatre. Benedict himself is a fourteen year old student from Bishop Wordsworth’s School and the play was commissioned, although I strongly suspect without any fee, by the director of a previous SYT production. In The Biscuit Tin, Benedict…
THE eyes of the entertainment world might have been on Hollywood last Sunday night but THE place to be was a few miles west in Topanga Canyon, where Gidget Zapata was celebrating her birthday. She runs Los Angeles’ favourite vintage shop, Hillbilly Hip, and she’s a keen fan of alt country, folk and Americana. So…
UK Premier for Penderecki at The Lighthouse Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra leader Amyn Merchant Kirill Karabits: Conductor Akiko Suwanai: Violin BEETHOVEN: Leonore Overture No.3 PENDERECKI: Symphony No.4 “Adagio” BEETHOVEN: Violin Concerto THE BSO has a proud historical record of UK premiers of works by composers of the stature of Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss. This tradition was maintained at…
THIS is the third show I have seen by BODS in the past 18 months, and after the last one I said I would travel a long way to see anything by this talented amateur group. It was therefore with great confidence that I sat expectantly in the Theatre Royal auditorium tonight, after such recent…
WHAT a blast it’s been – Three Women and the Truth on a whistle stop tour of the California coast from Berkeley to Santa Monica. It’s something we “critics” (aka fans) seldom get to do, and it’s many years on from my days with David Bowie and Mick Ronson on the Ziggy tour. Some things…
HANDEL in Italy was the final concert in this year’s Bath Bachfest, the successor to the city’s famous Bach Festival, and organised under the aegis of its long established Mozartfest. There were five concerts in this year’s series, featuring music not just by J.S. Bach but from the wider baroque period – Corelli, Vivaldi, Telemann,…
CARY Amateur Theatrical Society’s latest production is Lionel Bart’s ever-popular musical Oliver! Based, of course, on the novel by Charles Dickens, the show was the first modern British musical to have transferred successfully to Broadway. Although well over 50 years old now, there can be little doubt that, as a stage show, it has stood…
FOUR nights of music from Three Women and the Truth is half way through, Mary Gauthier, Eliza Gilkyson and Gretchen Peters, whose combined acronymic name came as a shock when they realised it, but has now been “owned’ by the trio, are playing to packed and very varied houses in California this week. They started…