THERE were some who thought that a theatrical adaptation of Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, with its tense courtroom climax, would be unlikely to work in the sylvan setting of Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, but last summer’s production confounded the sceptics, winning rave reviews from critics and the sell-out audiences. When…
THERE’S a standing joke in our family that I ought to be awarded a Damehood, for services to pantomime. That’s because, for as long as I can remember (or at least since I last wrote a pantomime myself) I have been traipsing round the region reviewing professional pantos before Christmas, and amateur ones after. My…
TAKE more than forty songs, all linked to travel; methods, destinations, weather, emotions and feelings associated with it, four sublimely talented actor-musicians, the cream of Salisbury Playhouse’s creative team, including its Artistic Director and one of the performers, and the intimate ambience of the Salberg Studio, and I challenge anybody not to be delighted with…
A GROUP of itinerant players, each with a musical instrument, surrounded by raggedy children, turns up amid the Christmas crowd, and just a few notes on the fiddle captures their attention. The children whirl and dance, their parents play and clap and before long everyone is woven into the show. The magic of the Klezmer…
THREE very funny men are at the centre of the pantomime at Bath this Christmas, and when they are on stage the magic is tangible. It’s something you look for as much in the faces and voices of the children in the audience as on the stage, and there isn’t a more magical venue than…
WARMINSTER’s Limelight Players played to full houses for four nights at the Athenaeum with The Vicar of Dibley: The Second Coming. Based on the 1990s television show (which starred Dawn French as the vicar of a rural parish full of eccentric characters), the show was first staged by the Limelight Players two years ago and…
POOLE’S Lighthouse Centre for the Arts has shone the spotlights onto circus and circus skills in a big way in recent years, so it’s hardly surprising that acrobatics, magic tricks and more big top fun make their way into the current pantomime. Really, Robin Hood isn’t a pantomime, and its inclusion into the genre usually…
BATH Theatre Royal’s dedicated youth theatre space, the egg, is the ideal setting for Matt Harvey’s new version of the (very) Grimm fairy tale, Rumpelstiltskin. It might date back to the late 1400s, but, as this clever adaptation proves, its message is as relevant today as it has always been. With new music by Thomas…
THE magic starts the moment you enter Yeovil Octagon’s wide auditorium for this season’s pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk. Helga Wood has transformed the stage into a veritable vegetable feast, just the thing for a story about beans and peas. And no opportunity for a dreadful (and hilarious) joke is left fallow in this terrific…
WHEN it comes to writing pantomime, Andrew Pollard and Kieran Buckeridge are something of a dream team. Andrew has now written fresh scripts for more than a dozen shows and played dame in most of them. The multi-talented Kieran composes the music, writes the lyrics (with Andrew) and plays dame too, all fitted in round…