AFTER what seems like centuries of watching and reviewing pantomimes, it is always a great thrill to spot a superstar performance on a local stage, and wait until the national critics and award-giving organisations put that name in their best-of-the-year lists. Salisbury Playhouse’s inventive, colourful, energetic and 100% fun version of Jack and the Beanstalk…
THERE is rich magic running through the Brewhouse Christmas show this year, and it seems to emanate from the mysterious rhynes and mumps around the county town, which can be surrounded in fast-rising water almost without warning, turning it into a different land. Sound a bit “woo-woo”? – well, maybe. Writer and director Sasha Wilson…
OLIVER Goldsmith’s 1773 comedy She Stoops to Conquer is said to have been based on an incident in his childhood, in which he was jestingly directed to a local manor house which he was told was an inn. Whatever the truth of the attribution, it resulted in a classic play that has stood the test…
THINK of Dylan Thomas and, unless you are a poetry scholar, the chances are you will hear the voice of Richard Burton in your head, reading words from Under Milk Wood. Now, if you are one of the few fortunate ticket holders for the new Emma Rice Company production at the Lucky Chance in Frome,…
IF you are wondering whether your little children are old enough to enjoy a full-blown pantomime this Christmas, but would like to take them to a live show, the place to go is Bath Theatre Royal’s dedicated youth space, The Egg, and its new show Snow Mice, on various days and times until 11th January….
I WAS brought up by a wildly romantic woman whose idea of love and relationships was moulded by the then-superstar Ivor Novello and The Dancing Years. We went to Bournemouth’s Pavilion Theatre Monday after Monday to watch the stars of the day do their thing. Now, watching the Barn Theatre production of the 2001 show…
IT’S hard to believe that 30 years have passed since that seven-minute interlude in the Dublin-staged 1994 Eurovision Song Contest caught the public’s imagination to such an extent that within a year it had expanded into a full-length stage show, which in turn, with its mixture of Irish music, dance and folk lore, has attracted…
PERHAPS the most wonderful, in the true sense of the word, thing about Christmas is to watch the delight and excitement on the faces of young children. And what better way to do it than to go along to Poole Lighthouse’s festive show Little Robin Red Vest, a two-person retelling of Jay Fearnley’s beloved story…
ELEVEN years after her memorable adaptation and production of A Christmas Carol at the Shelley Theatre in Southbourne, Helen Watts returned to Bournemouth last week with a new working of the Dickens classic for students of Arts University Bournemouth, at their home theatre, The Palace Court in Hinton Road. With an energetic cast of ten,…
BELOVED television sit coms have an insidious habit of introducing the population to catch phrases which quickly become essentials of everyday speech – and I will say this only wernce. So when the local am dram soc chooses to perform scenes from such a sit com, you can reliably expect the audience to join in…