JACQUELINE Wilson’s story Hetty Feather, originally published in 2009, has been a hit with young readers ever since, spawning several sequels one of which is about to be published. The Bath born writer was delighted when producer Mark Bentley suggested bring Hetty to the stage, and from its earliest outings at The Rose in Kingston,…
JUST less than a year ago, Amy Kemp (pictured right) was playing the lead in a youth theatre production of Spring Awakening at the Swan Theatre. Now she’s back as director of David Auburn’s play Proof, and kicking the Swan into a new era of experimental production. It is an astonishing achievement, visually and intellectually….
THE Schmoozenbergs are a Bristol based group of musicians with a lively passion for gypsy swing and jazz. Back for a second season with Take Art, Somerset’s enterprising arts charity, this quartet of supremely talented young men promised to recreate the swinging sounds of Paris in the 30s and 40s, bringing us irresistible rhythms and…
A PACKED Colston Hall enjoyed an insider’s look at Mozart’s three last symphonies before John Eliot Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists played them “in earnest.” The atmosphere of a “classical” concert has undergone a sea change in recent years. While the rigorous conductor, who is also an organic farmer in Dorset, wouldn’t dream of some of the…
Liadov: Kikimora Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Amyn Merchant Kees Bakels: Conductor Valeriy Sokolov: Violin HAVING glutted on Strauss waltzes over the New Year, this concert saw the BSO returning to their usual business of providing reliably polished and stimulating performances of the classical repertoire. It was…
ANDY Ford is one of Bristol’s local heroes: so he is the obvious choice to host an evening of entertainment at the Hippodrome, echoing those other famous Sunday Nights in London’s West End, which helped launch ITV in the mid 1950s and have been revived many time right up to the present, always hosted by…
COINCIDENTALLY, I had just finished reading a glowing review in The Times of the musical Showboat, which has been revived at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, when the opportunity to see Call Mr. Robeson arose. Showboat features such timeless songs as Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man of Mine and Bill as well as Ol’ Man…
THE cast of the Glastonbury and Street Musical Comedy Society Peter Pan are flying high over the post Christmas lethargy to bring real fun and excitement to audiences at Strode Theatre. Who’d have thought a few years ago that the college campus theatre could have produced a show with not one flying actor but four,…
THE Christmas revue show at Salisbury Playhouse’s Salberg Studio is an eagerly anticipated tradition, and this year the subject is money. With the increasing commercialisation of Christmas and the concentration on ever more expensive presents, it’s an apposite time to think about the spondulicks, and that’s just what director Gareth Machin and his quartet of…
THE Russian fairy story of The Snow Maiden has been given a make-over by Butterfly Psyche, and the results are on the stage at the Rondo in Bath until Sunday 20th December. Set in the frozen north, it all starts as the spirits of the ancestors get together to talk about old times and tell…