PATRICK Hamilton’s Gaslight, first seen in 1938, has a long and powerful legacy, including a new word for the English language and legislation recognising the coercive control that is at the core of the play. Frome Drama has chosen it to launch the 2025 season, and their production at the Merlin is directed by Richard…

WATCHING this show was a little like eating a gourmet burger full of top class ingredients surrounded by a slightly stale, soggy bun. Under the watchful eye of director/choreographer Craig Revel Horwood, this production was slick and smooth-running, with a string of excellent individual performances and a mouthwatering selection of 20 or so expertly staged…

IN the years since Amanda Whittington’s play Be My Baby was first seen in Salisbury in 2004, there has been growing awareness of the misery and trauma caused to mothers and children by the estimated 215,000 “forced adoptions” over 30 years after the Second World War, and the increased popularity of TV shows and DNA…

THIS reworking of the David Bintley choreographed, John Macfarlane designed production of Cinderella, set to Sergei Prokofiev’s wonderfully evocative score, is a delight to both the eye and the ear. Thanks partially to money raised by last years Big Give Christmas Challenge, the sumptuous costumes (including those delightful frog and lizard heads) have been returned…

THERE were 361 half-hour episodes of the American television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents during the decade following 1955, shows that attracted a host of A-list star actors and directors as well as the Essex-born Hitchcock, known as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. Some years ago, American composer, lyricist and…

GRAHAM Smith and Robert Brydges decided that it was time for Amateur Players of Sherborne to tackle an Ibsen play, after 91 years without a single work from the great Norwegian playwright. So they set about adapting the much-performed story, focussing on its timeless qualities and modern relevances, and their new version is on stage…

SWISS playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt studied philosophy and went to Berlin for postgraduate studies into Kierkegaard. There, he quickly formed a very different view of his native country and its famed neutrality, instead seeing a state polluted by greed and hypocrisy where neutrality was a euphemism for complicity. The fledgling philosopher turned his attention to playwriting…

THERE’S something about trees and since the publication of Merlin Sheldrake’s fascinating book Entangled Life, we know that there are forces underground, in constant communication with one another. So, if you have been in a forest and been aware of an invisible presence, it’s not really surprising … and humans have had that feeling for…

CONNOR McPherson’s 1997 play The Weir, written when he was in his mid-20s, is set in a dilapidated pub in County Leitrim on a windy night. At first sight it’s a ghostly story, and that is how some of the many productions around the world have played it. When Dennis Barwell chose it to direct…

THE multi-talented and super-versatile members of Yeovil Amateur Operatic Society have scored another triumph with their latest show at Westlands. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is Roald Dahl’s enduring, darkly-funny tale of a poor boy who proves his passion for chocolate to the very peculiar owner of the chocolate factory. And the Yeovil group has…