HINDSIGHT is a wonderful thing – we wouldn’t have done that or said that or thought that, would we? But for the young women who went out to nurse in the First World War, the reality and horror that they encountered was so different from the glorious battle that their mothers and sisters were promoting…
THERE’s a Bronte Season going on, organised by south west based Butterfly Psyche and Livewire theatre and directed by Shane Morgan and Jazz Hazelwood. It involves Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, all newly and inventively adapted (by Dougie Blaxland and Alison Farina) and performed by one or…
PERIPLUM brought the madness, chaos and terror of war to Blandford Marketplace in The Bell, a spectacular open-air show which is part of this year’s biennial Inside Out Dorset festival. Thousands of people crowded into the town centre for the free show, which depicted unnamed tribes at war, killing and being killed, and the challenge…
JONATHAN Larson’s rock opera (not musical; quite apart from its source in Puccini, the whole structure of the piece is distinctly operatic with its almost total lack of spoken dialogue and 19th-century-style recitatives) is probably the most successful and influential work of its kind of the last fifty years; it’s been described as speaking to,…
THE Ustinov Studio’s exciting autumn season opens with the UK premiere of Play Strindberg, Alistair Beaton’s new translation of Friedrich Durrenmatt’s satirical take on Dance of Death. The programme starts with an imagined conversation between the Swiss dramatist and his translator, justifying the slight changes but emphasising that this is very much a translation and…
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…