SALLY Cookson’s reworking of the stories of Cinderella and The Ash Girl, Cinderella – A Fairytale, returns to the Tobacco Factory in Southville after its sell-out performances in 2011, and before it even opened a further week was added to the run to accommodate demand for tickets. With no element of pantomime, this is a…
TAUNTON’S Brewhouse re-enters its life as a producing theatre with a steampunk musical version of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, on stage until 31st December. Tim Claydon has directed and choreographed the show, which opened at Battersea Arts Centre in 2001, written by Phil Willmott and Annemarie Thomas and based on Verne’s…
POOLE’S Lighthouse has a growing reputation for circus arts, so it is no surprise that the homegrown pantomime for 2016/17 starts in a circus, with all its thrills and spills. But before long the acrobats realise that it is Aladdin they are supposed to be performing, and the audience is whisked off to an old…
THERE are few more delightful things to see over the Christmas period than the faces of excited children just waiting for the next surprise. And few places where it happens more often than in the theatre. In the Colston Hall’s Lantern, Bristol Old Vic and Wardrobe Theatre are performing an adaptation of Edward Ardizzone’s Little…
IT has been a long time since Bristol Old Vic staged a traditional Christmas pantomime, leaving that genre to the glitzy and expensive Hippodrome. Audiences have come to expect something different at the old theatre in King Street, and this year’s offering, a radical reworking of The Snow Queen, won’t disappoint. If BOV has a…
I OFTEN joke that were Her Majesty to nod to me in the honours lists, I’d have to skip the MBEs and OBEs and go straight to a Damehood, so many pantomimes have I reviewed in my career. So it is with delight that I can say that Salisbury Playhouse’s Aladdin, on until 7th January,…
THE story of Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, is the 2016/17 popular choice for Christmas shows, and at Exeter, director Paul Jepson has taken most of Frederick Gaines’s stage adaptation and infused his own message of feminism and the pan-sexuality that Christine and the Queens have brought into this week’s news….
THERE’S a new musical at Salisbury, created specially for young children and their families, but equally delightful for all generations. Musician and singer Glyn Kerslake and Playhouse artistic director Gareth Machin have got together to create a version of the Clement Clarke Moore poem The Night Before Christmas, and adding the essential audience participation and…
PETER Pan is a story that enchants generations of children and retains its fascination for adults, so what better family show to choose for a Christmas production. Salisbury’s enterprising Studio Youth Theatre has taken on the production in its entirety, with just a very little help from the grown ups, and it’s a delight. On…
THERE was an extra special atmosphere at the Corn Exchange at Dorchester last week for the Tim Laycock – Emma Hill production of Jack Shepherd’s stage adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel. Not only was the actor and writer present for Saturday’s performance, but the whole thing was given where Hardy himself watched it performed. And…