Reviews

Academy of Ancient Music, Bach Fest at Bath Assembly Rooms

“THIRTEEN, unlucky for some” is the oft-heard bingo cry when the number 13 comes up, but I doubt that any of the sell-out audience for the last concert of this seasons Bach Fest felt that they were unlucky after spending the evening in the company of Bojan Cicic, director and violin, and the other members…

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Peter Pan – The Boy Who Could Fly, Bourton Players

“COME fly with me” invite three attractive young dancers at the opening of the Bourton Players’ highly original 2020 pantomime. But health and safety isn’t having any of it. No flying in the village hall, say Alf Warning (Linda Curry) and his incompetent sidekick Sid Down (Emma Martin). They don’t want anyone flying – or…

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The Taming of the Shrew, RSC at Plymouth Theatre Royal

THE Royal Shakespeare Company’s welcome return tour to Plymouth brought three current productions – Measure for Measure, As You Like It and the gender-swapped The Taming of the Shrew – back to the south west. The Justin Audibert production of The Shrew confounds expectations, set in a matriarchal Padua where Katherine and Bianco are the…

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The Sixteen, Bath Bach Fest at St Mary’s, Bathwick

WHEN I mentioned the Bach Fest to a friend, to whom the music which fills the programme did not appeal, they immediately hid behind that old excuse, “well of course such an event is very elitist”. To which I replied “there must be an great number of elitist music fans in the Bath area, because…

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Chloe and the Colour Catcher, Exeter Phoenix and touring

IMAGINE a world where corrupt and fearful politicians forced a unifying greyness on the entire population – a state where everyone wore the same, talked the same, looked the same and lived in fear of breaking the rules. That’s what’s happened in Greytopia, where her Grey­nesty  has collected all the colour and joy and locked…

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SIX, Bath Theatre Royal and touring

SIX is a phenomenon. It started life as a student show, and now it’s packing theatres round the globe. It brings new audiences in. It’s super clever. It’s full of unrelenting energy, colour, music and light. It takes a new look at the familiar story of the six wives of Henry VIII and it has…

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My Fair Lady, Studio Theatre Salisbury

IT takes talent and chutzpah to mount a production of My Fair Lady, and the young members of Salisbury’s Studio Youth Theatre have both in spades. Lerner and Loewe’s musical version of George Ber­n­ard Shaw’s Pygmalion, famously filmed with designs by Cecil Beaton, really leaves no scope for faltering.  The cast are either what is…

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Dial M for Murder, Theatre Royal, Bath

THE highly-polished sophistication that can be seen on every inch of film in Alfred Hitchcock’s screen version of Frederick Knott’s expertly contrived thriller may not be fully replicated in this production, but under tight dir­ec­tion from Anthony Banks there is still plenty of tension and thrills on view for the audience to enjoy. For those…

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The Realistic Joneses, Bath Ustinov Studio

ANYONE who has met a 30-something American clean- freak, displaying all the ges­ti­culating neuroses that come with the territory, will immediately recognize Pony Jones, one of four extraordinary characters in Will Eno’s award-winning play The Realistic Joneses, which is making its UK premiere on Bath Ustinov Studio’s stage. Set in two neighboring houses, both surrounded…

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