MENTION the name Federico Garcia Lorca, and whether it be in connection with his work as a writer, poet , artist, his personal or political life, or even his death and you will be courting controversy. He is in many ways the original “Marmite” playwright, considered by many as a true genius and regarded as…
THIS isn’t really a review – it wouldn’t be fair to the six actors, who still had two rehearsals to go before opening night when I saw Toby Greenfield’s production of Nina Raine’s play Rabbit. Instead it’s an idea of what audiences might expect when they see the show at The Exchange from Thursday 19th…
HOW does a college campus theatre celebrate 60 years of entertaining the community, providing fun, challenges, companionship and education for generations of people and looking from a rich past into the future with determination and excitement? That was the question facing Strode Theatre’s manager Fares Moussa and the committee behind the anniversary showcase, performed twice…
IT may be more than 50 years since Athol Fugard wrote his anti-apartheid play Sizwe Banzi is Dead, but as John Pfumojena, director and performer of the new production at MAST Mayflower studios quickly realised, the play has powerful resonances in the 21st century world we live in. White South African Fugard wrote the play with actor…
IN 1976, Bath and Bristol’s favourite writer, director and pantomime Dame, Chris Harris wrote and played the only role in Kempe’s Jig, a play that followed Shakespeare’s best-known fool as he danced the 125 miles from London to Norwich. A natural clown and tumbler, Chris brought out the physical comedy, dancing and mime talents of…
IMAGINE your delight if, as an enterprising regional production company, you were approached by a venerable writer and offered the “final part” of a much-loved television series as a world premiere. That’s what happened to Cirencester’s Barn Theatre, when Jonathan Lynn, half of the duo that created Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, suggested staging…
THE climax of a packed and exciting week for dancers in North Dorset came on Sunday night when stars of Kyiv City Ballet and some of the students with whom they had been working joined Palida Choir and young Ukrainian singers and dancers for a programme showcasing the life of a dancer. The visit by…
DAVID Mamet’s Pulitzer-prize winning 1984 play Glengarry Glen Ross is a scarifying expose of the vicious sales-practices of its time, when targets were all and (in this case) real estate agents achieved them by any means or lost their jobs. Perhaps it was a strange play for the first in-house production by Lyme Regis’s famously…
JOHN Mortimer, who would have celebrated his centenary this year, is perhaps best remembered for creating the immortal Rumpole of the Bailey. His largely autobiographical play A Voyage Round My Father first came to public attention 60 years ago, as three short radio plays. Later adapted for film and for television and stage plays, this…
SALISBURY’S multi-award winning Studio Theatre, now based in Ashley Road, has recently celebrated its 70th anniversary, but in all that time and all those plays, it has never produced a work that centres on LGBTQ characters and issues (to be fair, no-one had ever heard of the ever-expanding LGBTQ categorisations for the great majority of…