Glière: Les Sirènes Turnage: Testament Prokofiev: War and Peace Suite Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Amyn Merchant Kirill Karabits conductor Natalya Romaniw soprano EVEN by the standards that we’ve grown to expect from Karabits and the BSO, this concert really was something very special. It was also a very personal concert for the Ukranian conductor, with…
TAUNTON Thespians are marking the centenary of the end of the Great War with a production of Joan Littlewood’s anti-war musical satire Oh What a Lovely War, all this week ending on Sunday 11th November with a matinee performance. It is an extraordinary play, which, when it opened at Stratford East 55 years ago, caused…
THE Nightingales is the new play that has tempted treasured television writer and actress Ruth Jones back onto the stage after 12 years. It opens in Bath before a national tour and a hoped-for West End transfer. It is directed by the renowned Christopher Luscombe, and its credits include well-known producer Jenny Topper, working with…
SET on the first Peace Day, in July 1919, Taboo Theatre’s Armistice-marking play, is based on real people who lived in and around a North Dorset town at the end of the Great War. It will be performed twice at The Exchange at Sturminster Newton on Saturday 10th November, and the FTR had a sneak…
MOZART’S opera Don Giovanni, with its story based on the fables of the notorious libertine and what would now be called serial sex offender Don Juan, is perhaps the Austrian composer’s greatest work. There’s a bit of everything in this epic opera, from beautiful love songs through tragic laments, singalong tunes and vituperative calls for…
SUB-TITLED The Story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, this show reminded me of those Hollywood “biogs” of famous musicians which professed to be an accurate account of the subjects life, but owed as much, if not more, to the efforts of a script writer as the facts. Although we learn about Francesco Stephan…
WATER is as indispensable to life as air –it is intimately connected with birth, but it is also linked to death … all themes which surface during the extraordinary sequence of films, dance and music that makes up Bodies of Water. The latest collaboration between two Somerset artists – dancer and physical theatre practitioner Melanie…
MIKE Leigh’s play Abigail’s Party has become a byword for monstrous behaviour and tacky 70s culinary and decorative trends. Thanks to Alison Steadman, who made her name in the role of Beverly the hostess from suburban hell, Leigh’s brilliantly cruel look at aspirational housing estate life has become known as a star vehicle. So Douglas…
LAURIE Lee is as inescapably linked to the Cotswolds – and specifically to the dramatic valleys around his home village of Slad – as Thomas Hardy is to Dorset or the Bronte sisters to Yorkshire. And we got a real understanding of the profound connection between the great poet and writer and his home place…
LA CENERENTOLA is a retelling of the fairy tale Cinderella. A real showcase for vocal virtuosity, this vibrant and colourful revival of the production first staged by WNO in 2007 was sung and played with impeccable precision. An absolute delight from start to finish, last night’s performance was, without doubt, one of my musical and…