WHAT watery treats are in store for theatregoers in Bristol this Christmas – with The Little Mermaid and Antarctica at the Old Vic, and now Last Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor at the Tobacco Factory in Bedminster. The venue has linked up with Travelling Light theatre to devise this wonderfully inventive retelling of some of…
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Amyn Merchant Conductor: Yan Pascal Tortelier Augustin Hadelich, Violin R Strauss Till Eulenspiegel Hindemith Mathis der Maler Symphony Beethoven Violin Concerto ‘Pranks and Penitence’ was the somewhat puzzling label that BSO’s marketing department put on this diverse programme. The pranks were clearly in the first piece, but neither of the others deals particularly with…
MODERN theatres all over the country are looking for that elusive formula that allows them to put on a non-pantomime Christmas show for the family without compromising on the essential elements that have made panto so successful for so many years. And in these cash-strapped times, that means not only a fresh approach to music…
BACK in 2005, students from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School gave the first performance of Adrian Mitchell’s adaptation of CS Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe outside Stratford-upon-Avon, and this Christmas a new bunch of training actors has returned to the children’s story, directed by Jenny Stephens. This sell-out show, at the Redgrave…
IF you are wondering how to occupy small children in the run-up to Christmas, or in the days following the holidays, there probably won’t be a more wondrous experience than Little Bulb Theatre’s Antarctica, on at Bristol Old Vic Studio until 4th January. Specially created for very young audiences and their families, but equally enchanting for…
THE audience at the Spiegeltent, in Bristol for the month up to Christmas, may have been the first to hear the Tiger Lillies’ new commission from Opera North, Lulu – a Murder Ballad, on 1st December. Loosely based on Wedekind’s Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, it is 20 songs and interludes charting the life and…
FROME-based actor, playwright (and now film director) Pip Utton has an extraordinary knack of inhabiting his characters, so that their familiar tics and expressions become part of his face and body. His solo shows are now the stuff of theatrical legend, after many years packing houses on the Edinburgh Fringe, and touring to venues large…
PETER Wintle first saw Peter Shaffer’s play Equus in 1976, three years after I saw the first production at the National Theatre. It has always been one of the most controversial plays among Shaffer’s extraordinarily varied body of work, recently in the public eye again with Daniel (Harry Potter) Radcliffe in the leading role of…
ANYONE who has ever had dealings with amateur musical or dramatic societies will recognise the set-up in Alan Ayckbourn’s brilliant comedy, A Chorus of Disapproval, Frome Drama Club’s autumn production at the Merlin in November 2014. There is the endearing old couple, company stalwarts who are slightly despised by the younger (but not necessarily more…
YEOVIL Youth Theatre’s “Grease” was chock-a-block with energy from the word go. As the fact packed programme informed us: “The watchword with a production like “Grease” is FUN” – and fun it certainly was. As one of the few people there with a bus pass, it was a treat to witness the eager anticipation and…