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…
THE Geoffrey Chaucer Canterbury Tales-telling contest is heading for a field or a theatre near you between now and 26th July. It’s a sort of local Britain’s Got Talent, in which the participants work together to produce a version of the medieval stories that’s accessible to modern audiences, and the winner is chosen by the…
THE Greek myth of Orpheus and his trip to the Underworld has never been more fun or more irreverent than in Jeff Clarke’s version for Iford Festival. Regular audience members are accustomed to Opera della Luna’s antics, but there was general agreement on the beautiful middle Saturday that Clarke has excelled himself with this free…
SHAKESPEARE’S Twelfth Night, often seen as the “entry level” play in the canon, has been staged in countless periods, settings and costumes over the years. Now Gillingham School teachers Richie Lunn and Jane McCarthy have chosen the post-punk era, music of the Sex Pistols and the Clash, and an urban wasteland setting for the end…
THE Cheltenham Everyman production of George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession is at Salisbury Playhouse until Saturday 4th July, and is almost sold out. But judging by the opening night audience, several anticipated an evening of period laughs a la Downton Abbey, and that it certainly is not. Written in 1893 but not performed until…
JEAN McConnell’s series of “Deckchairs” playlets, with their small, all-female casts and minimal set, are a godsend for amateur societies. It is, perhaps, a slight surprise to find such safe fare on the menu at Halse, but every society needs a balanced programme and God of Carnage all the time would get a little wearing….
GIACOMO Rossini was only 20 years old when he wrote his short comic opera La Scala di Seta (The Silken Ladder) and while its story is full of youthful fun, there is no trace of the beginner in the music. It was brought to the intimate surroundings of the Brownsword Hall in Poundbury by Opera…
William Congreve wrote only five plays, the best known of which was the last, The Way of the World. Love for Love, written in 1695 and famous for the line “O fie, miss, you must not kiss and tell”, is a complicated story of sexual encounters and true love which students from Bristol Old Vic…
OSCAR Wilde’s classic The Importance of Being Earnest has been described as the “perfect comedy” and is certainly one of the most enduringing popular shows on the English-speaking stage. Edith Evans is thought to have nailed Lady Bracknell for all time with her iconic interrogation “a handbag?” and directors and actors have sought in vain…