YOU could have measured the audience excitement on a seismograph at the Octagon on Saturday, when the band struck up for the annual pantomime and the lights went down. Peter Pan, the fifth production by Evolution at the venue, has everything – a strong story, colourful characters, romance, jealousy, songs, dances and just enough topical…
MADE in Dagenham is a British musical based on the film of the same name about the female workers at Ford’s Dagenham plant who went on strike in 1968 to try and get equal pay to the men, a campaign which, despite helping create the momentum for the Equal Pay Act in 1970, is still…
IF you want a family show filled with furry super heroes, a strong environmental message and great songs and dances, head for the Nuffield on Southampton University campus this Christmas. There Sam Holcroft’s stage adaptation of Roald Dahl’s favourite story is on stage until 8th January, when it begins its 17-venue UK tour until the…
FROME Drama Club’s radical reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest – one of the Bard’s “entry-level” plays – might have been just what the board of The Globe had in mind when they unceremoniously and controversially ousted Emma Rice in the early stages of her directorship. Director Stephen Scammell, who memorably played McMurphy in Frome’s One…
A MAN and a woman. A story as old as time and as contemporary as today’s news. He and she finding each other, losing each other, finding each other again … in a town, a city, a country, perhaps a world in turmoil. Caridad Svich asks more questions than she answers in Archipelago, the powerful…
MERE Drama Society triumphantly celebrated its 70th anniversary with a production of Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, Constance Cox’s stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s short story. Set in a grand Grosvenor Square house in 1890, it’s the story of the charming but ill equipped Lord Arthur, 30 years old and about to marry Sybil Merton. Until…
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra leader Amyn Merchant Ion Marin: Conductor MAHLER: Symphony No. 6 in A minor THE Romanian conductor Ion Marin was a very late stand-in for an indisposed conductor in BSO performances of Mahler’s 9th symphony in March last year. Reviews of the concerts, including my own, were universally enthusiastic, so it was no…
RECENTLY returning from an America in chaos, where many are openly discussing the current situation as a seismic event as powerful as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Alice Childress’s mid 50s play Trouble in Mind is a bitter reminder of how little has changed. Whatever our political leanings, it seems incredible that a country as vast,…
NO-ONE is interested in the First World War. That’s what Ian Hislop and Nick Newman were told when they pitched the idea of The Wipers Times to a film company back at the start of the 21st century. In the annals of stupid, short-sighted decisions, that is right up there with the publishers who turned…
THE stories of Dr Seuss are staple fare in the US, but have never made it so big this side of the Atlantic. We have Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s musical compendium to thank for introducing the unforgettable characters and magical worlds to generations of British children and their parents. Yeovil Youth Theatre has chosen…