“PERHAPS we all despair of politicians – but David Hare had special cause,” begins the programme note for the Headlong/Sheffield Theatres/Rose Theatre Kingston production of his 1992 play, The Absence of War, at Bath until Saturday 9th May. It was one of Hare’s trilogy that looked at the British establishment, along with Murmuring Judges about…
DEBBIE Isitt’s play The Woman Who Cooked her Husband was first published and performed in 1993, and when it was revived nine years later, national newspaper critics were at pains to point out that feminism had moved on in the decade and it seemed dated. Fast forward to 2015 at Poole Lighthouse’s studio theatre, where…
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Kirill Karabits: Conductor Sunwook Kim: Piano Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor Prokofiev: Symphony No. 6 THE packed audience at the Lighthouse burst into prolonged and enthusiastic applause last night before a note was played. This was at the announcement that the newly-designated Chief Conductor Kirill Karabits had agreed a…
GILBERT and Sullivan, doyens of Victorian society, created the ever-popular The Pirates of Penzance in 1879, all full of swashbuckling seafaring naughty sons of nobles, a bevy of daughters of a Major General and incompetent bobbies. Since then it has been a staple of the English-speaking stage, with professional and amateur productions around the world….
OUTSIDE Mullingar is a play about Ireland. It’s a play about love. It’s about the land and the love of the land. It’s about how we communicate – and how we don’t. About truth and lies, about knowing who we are and finding our way through a dark and puzzling world. It comes on a…
SALISBURY Playhouse’s latest big show is a co-production with Colchester Mercury Theatre of Howard Ashman’s and Alan Menken’s ever popular musical Little Shop of Horrors. As the author himself writes, the show satirizes many things: science fiction, B movies, musical comedy and even the Faust legend. There is, therefore, a real temptation to play it…
AS part of the Shaftesbury Chamber Music Series’ sixth season, founder and series director Ruth Rogers (violin) was joined yesterday afternoon by Katharine Gowers (violin), Adrian Brendel (cello) and Charles Owen (piano). Together these musicians form the Plush Ensemble. The Series always promises to present musicians of the highest calibre and all four come with…
HAVING only seen the original 1968 Mel Brooks film of The Producers, in which the only piece of featured original music is the title of the show within the show, Springtime For Hitler, I was intrigued to see how this film had been turned into a full scale stage musical, in the same way as…
DAISY Meredith has won the first scholarship to Grangewood School for Girls, the very first elementary schoolgirl to do so, and this does not go down well with some of the other girls. Denise Deegan’s witty pastiche on the books of Angela Brazil started life at the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton in 1983, before a…
THERE are few times when anyone can say they have seen two definitive productions of famous musicals within 19 days, but I am fortunate enough to have done so, and both of them thanks to people who live in Somerset. The first was the recent ground-breaking and site-specific Sweeney Todd, set in a rebuilt pie shop…