YOU don’t often hear the phrase “protest singer” these days, but the tradition – which stretches back for many years in unions and traditional working communities, and was reinvented by the folk singers of the 1960s – lives on in Reg Meuross, the Crewkerne-based singer-songwriter whose work has always championed the issues of the day,…
FLORA Wilson Brown’s play The Beautiful Future is Coming was first seen at the Jermyn Street Theatre in 2024, and now comes to Bristol Old Vic in a new production by Nancy Medina, the theatre’s artistic director. In the programme Nancy says “ We’re thrilled to share this beautiful human story in our city, which…
IT keeps raining, the fields are under water, the country has a policy of forced quotas for farmers, townsfolk are rationed to one egg a week, any misdemeanour or farm failure means removal from your farm to work in factories where life expectancy is a maximum of three years … and brutally trained young men…
PRONOUNS have become weirdly political in the last few years – it is all-too-easy to cause offence by using the wrong one when addressing or referring to a person who has adopted “they” and “their” as their preferred form. Author, environmental campaigner, poet and philosopher Robert Macfarlane encounters the same problem in his new book,…
IN a recent discussion with a group of young people about the merits of the lyrics in modern pop music compared to those in the 20th century, those of the 1930s were dismissed as having no merit, just cheap romantic nonsense, full of ‘moon and June’ rhymes. A visit to this production where Matthew Bourne…
I MUST confess that having seen mort than a dozen productions of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s musical version of Maurine Watkins 1926 play since it first hit the stage in 1975, I came to this new production with a rather jaded palate. However, it took only a few minuets, and Djalenga Scott’s Velma Kelly…
WHAT is it about the story of Dracula that continues to grip us? Whether it is the 1897 original Bram Stoker novel, the high camp of Hammer horror movies, the dark charisma of the Mark Bruce Dance Company version or any of the stage adaptations, this gothic tale exerts a peculiar fascination. One answer, suggested…
ANTHONY Shaffer’s thriller Sleuth is one of those extraordinary plays whose complexities are such that you forget the outcome, no matter how many times you see it – and that’s even WITH two famous film versions, one made in Dorset’s own Athelhampton House back in 1972 and starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. Set firmly…
BATH was buzzing on Saturday night – the city’s famous rugby club was winning a big match against Leicester and excited fans were gathering round big screens in bars to celebrate the successes and camp glitz of Eurovision. The atmosphere in the beautiful Abbey was perhaps a little more muted, but the enthusiasm was palpable…
HAD Sir William Schwenck Gilbert been alive today, I would take money on his including the latest and plupenultimate president of the United States and his South African top-line-of-keyboard-iconic tech bro sidekick, as well as those for whom personal pronouns are more important than personal relationships, in his brilliant patter songs … so thank goodness…