STOOPING to conquer is definitely the 2015 play of choice, and Michael Gilbert’s touring production for Taunton Thespians is the most traditional, and hilarious, of the four I have seen in recent months. The company performs at various locations in Somerset, and I caught Goldsmith’s classic comedy in a perfect setting, against the backdrop of…
COUNTRY house opera is a long-established feature of the British summer – but when Matt Brady brought his new Covent Garden Dance Company to a walled garden in south west Wiltshire six years ago he was doing something completely new. He was not only giving dance lovers in this rural area a chance to see…
I FIRST heard of the Buffalo Gals through their facebook page, and was intrigued enough by the snippets of American musical history and dance to go along to their Frome Festival gig. I was anticipating a night of American Old-Time String Band tunes but was totally unprepared for the sheer diversity of styles in this…
TAKE four energetic and versatile actors, an adventure story by John Buchan, an iconic Alfred Hitchcock film, a buffed-up adaptation by the National Theatre of Brent and a hardworking backstage team, and you just might have a sensational version of The 39 Steps. Sean Driver, Chrissy Mumford, Mark Payne and Ben Woof, are on stage…
IT’S many years since Salisbury’s Studio Theatre company has left its Ashley Road base to perform a summer show alfresco … or at least, nearly! This year Tamsin Jacson has taken her troupe to the old barn at Dog Kennel Farm, part of the Hulse estate at Breamore, to perform Keith Dewhurst’s adaptation of Flora…
ALAN Ayckbourn’s twin plays House and Garden are set simultaneously in the sitting room of the house and the lawns of the garden on the day a government advisor is coming to offer a top job and the village fete is scheduled. Like most of the writer’s works, these are stories of ordinary people in…
IT was a scene that you feel Thomas Hardy would richly have enjoyed – as the New Hardy Players’ 10th anniversary production of The Return of the Native reached its stormy climax, the rain, which had been playing with the audience for about half an hour, came down in sheets and the thunder rattled round….
IT’S all too easy for amateur dramatic companies in small communities to get stuck in a rut, endlessly choosing tired old farces or murder mysteries … and that’s just what David Tristram’s play Last Tango in Little Grimley is all about. The AmDramSoc’s chief tradition is to play to seven-eighth empty houses and to loose…
ALAN Ayckbourn’s Norman Conquests have been among his most popular plays since the trilogy was first performed back in 1973 with Tom Courtenay as Norman. I have loved the three plays – Living Together, Table Manners and Round and Round the Garden – ever since I heard that legendary production on the radio. Courtenay, with his…
WHAT an inspiration of Lindsay Posner’s to update Oliver Goldsmith’s 1773 comedy She Stoops to Conquer to the 1920s, and how brilliantly thought-through is the current production, opening the Bath 2015 summer season. Simon Higlett’s marvellously recognisable set brings the Hardcastle family home and the Three Pigeons pub into Coward’s Hay Fever days, with Marlow…