RODGERS and Hammerstein’s last musical together, The Sound of Music, was first performed only 14 years after the end of the Second World War, when memories of Nazi incursions over Europe were fresh in the minds of audiences. Now, the details of that war are unfamiliar to younger viewers, but, thanks to the powerful story…
THE first performances of David Hare’s new play Grace Pervades offer a unique opportunity to theatre lovers – to sit in one of the country’s most beautiful theatres learning fascinating facts about Victorian theatre legends Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, from a stage on which they actually performed. And, for these days of breathless star-struckery,…
IF you have reached the stage when you think “O no, not another juke box musical”, think again – because this stage version of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 film leaves the rest of them trailing in its wake. Practically every number, from the spectacularly-staged The Sparkling Diamond to the haunting Nature Boy, fits the storyline, which…
HENRY V – Marquis of Anglesea rather than he of “once more into the breach” – is the extraordinary subject of Seiriol Davies’s show How to Win Against History, which has its first fully-staged production at Bristol’s beautiful Old Vic Theatre … made even more exotically, fantastically beautiful in Hayley Grindle’s Cabinet of Curiosities set….
THRILLER writer Peter James is keen to point out that his creation Roy Grace is HMQ Camilla’s favourite detective, and it is he who leads the investigation in Picture You Dead, the seventh and latest James novel to be dramatised for the theatre, touring the UK until the end of July. Mr James, whose Brighton-based…
THE Rude Mechanicals, that endlessly inventive commedia dell’arte touring company, first performed Pete Talbot’s play Gentle Harry’s Farm in 2011, and now the story of a green and pleasant England in the 1950s is on the road again. Performing in the open air is always a gamble, and one that didn’t quite pay off at…
THE New Hardy Players, who were founded to mark the 100th birthday of Norrie Woodall*, the last surviving member of the original Hardy Players, this year celebrate their own big birthday – their 20th anniversary. They marked it with a return to touring their summer production for the first time since the pandemic, with a…
SINCE its formation in 2012, the Taunton based @2KTheatre has made extensive tours of Somerset, taking comedy and drama to many small venues where there no longer is a local non-professional company. Picking up several awards en route, they have presented classic comedies – Noel Coward’s Private Lives, Alan Bennet’s Habeus Corpus and The Lady…
BACK in the dark ages in Bournemouth, and every time a more sordid story emerged from the courts, my first editor used to delight us trainees with the mischievous quip “How unlike the home life of our own dear queen.” This extraordinary woman was so much a part of all our lives for so long…
PETE Machale, who graduated from the Arts University Bournemouth’s acting course in 2017 with a memorable performance as the White Rabbit in Alice, is back, but now as a playwright commissioned to create a new play based (loosely) on a bit of the history of the Palace Court Theatre, where students on the course now…