THIS 250th anniversary year of the birth of Jane Austen must have seemed the perfect time to tour PD James’s murder mystery sequel to Austen’s most famous book, Pride and Prejudice. The James novel, published in 2011, was a pastiche in Austen style, and was very successfully adapted for television, getting a Christmas showing in…
THE Miracle Theatre summer show is a perennial favourite with audiences across the south and west, and this year’s production, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, is no exception. Now returned to its home county of Cornwall for the last 2025 performances, the final cross-border show was at Sandford Orcas on the perfect evening of…
A 1993 Play and Playgoers Year Book survey placed Yorkshire-born John Godber in third place behind William Shakespeare and Alan Ayckbourn, as the most performed playwright in the UK. Those heady days of popularity, led by plays like Bouncers and Up ‘n’ Under (and Shakers, co-written with his wife Jane Thornton), may be behind this…
THE 17th century walled garden at Hatch House near Tisbury is a magical setting for any event, but it has a uniquely seductive atmosphere when the annual visit of Covent Garden Dance Company stages Ballet Under The Stars. Ballet at Hatch has become known as “the Glyndebourne of dance” – and it’s a fair comparison,…
RICHARD Brinsley Sheridan’s wonderful comedy of manners and class, The Rivals, celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, so what better choice of summer touring play for the aptly- named Rain or Shine Theatre Company. The company was founded in 1998, with the specific intention of performing whatever the weather, and many nights have found sodden…
THIS year is the 20th anniversary of Dorset Opera’s move from Sherborne’s Big Schoolroom to the Coade Hall at Bryanston School near Blandford, and something special was needed to celebrate the occasion. Artistic director Rod Kennedy could hardly have anticipated the extraordinary thrill that South Korean baritone Hansung Yoo would bring to Dorset in the…
SOME psychologists will tell you that early teens is the worst time for major life crises, like divorce or death, and one thing you learn in life is that nobody, absolutely nobody, can tell you how to grieve. It is something you have to find out for yourself. Bright-but-stroppy Rory is 15, and suddenly faced with…
WHAT is the summer open air theatre touring schedule without its Shakespeare, and no Shakespearean play is more popular than A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Revolving around love, mystery, demanding parents, jealous spouses, authoritarian rulers and blundering rustics, and with a beautiful forest setting, it tells a timeless story. Taunton Thespians began their summer tours back…
NEVER out of print since it was first published in 1865, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of the best known stories ever written. Although thought of, and usually described as, a children’s novel, full of symbolism and surreal twists and turns, it has also found itself dissected and interpreted in literally hundreds…
THERE is an understandable degree of secrecy surrounding the meetings of The Susan B Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein, and, as the audience at Strode Theatre in Street is invited to attend the annual celebration, that sense of mystery must prevail. The year is 1956 and the Sisterhood meets in upper New…