STOURHEAD’s annual Festival of the Voice owes its origins to the Confluence Project, almost 15 years ago now, when two musicians, Helen Porter and Karen Wimhurst, came together to travel the course of the River Stour from its source to the sea, exploring the importance of water in our lives and creating music en route….
YASMINA Reza wrote one of my favourite plays, “Art”, and after its huge success in London’s West End and on Broadway, three other plays by Reza have been translated from the original French by the same British playwright, Christopher Hampton. One of these, Life x 3, is gracing the stage of the Swan Theatre in…
ALL week, walkers, runners and locals driving past Poole Park watched the pick-a-stick construction of bamboo pieces of all sizes, from bendy striplings to massive trunks, as it was erected by the cricket ground. What on earth was going on? Finally on Friday night all was revealed – and it was truly spectacular, in every…
WE were invited to “attend the tale of Sweeney Todd”, in the intimate surroundings of Bath’s Rondo Theatre, by Merriman Productions, a Midsomer Norton based company, who rose to the challenge Stephen Sondheim’s musical presents with considerable assurance. The largely youthful cast was headed by William Stevens who gave a truly spine-tingling performance in the…
SEAN O’Casey’s Irish drama Juno and the Paycock opened in Dublin 90 years ago, and has become the writer’s most frequently performed and most popular work. Its timely revival at Bristol Old Vic, played on the deep stage in front of a rickety structure of discarded furniture, musical instruments, doors and windows, powerfully underlines its…
THE Filter “incarnation” of the Scottish Play started its life at the Tobacco Factory in Bedminster in the spring, and now returns for its first performances before setting off on a national tour. Like all the company’s productions, it explores the interaction of music, text, movement and sound, and what better play than the tense…
ALAN Ayckbourn’s 1975 Bedroom Farce is one of his most popular and frequently performed plays, so it is a real delight to see it fresh as a daisy and full of unexpected delights. In Gareth Machin’s production at Salisbury Playhouse, opening the 2014-15 season until Saturday 4th October, the theatre has been re-conformed to allow…
STORM on the Lawn, now in its 17th season at the ball court at Prior Park college above Bath, is always an exciting enterprise. The public show is the culmination of three short weeks of intensive work by the young actors and back-stage crew, bringing together a new work in an atmospheric setting. With a…
HOW you feel about Judith Bliss and her flamboyant, warring, ultra-theatrical family probably depends on whether you actually know people like the Bliss family in general – and Judith in particular. If you view them through the prism of “normality” and imagine that such behaviour is (a) grotesquely exaggerated and (b) dreadfully self-indulgent, you laugh…
SHREK is a little like Sondheim’s Into The Woods – with familiar fairy tale characters linked by a new story. From my first knowledge of Shrek I was intrigued: a cinema trailer with famous fairytale characters started appearing in late 2000, even before very grown-up films, and I was hooked. When the film came out…