IFORD Manor near Bradford on Avon may well be the most beautiful setting for “garden opera” but it is also the smallest, with performances in a cloister that seats about 100 around a tiny acting space. So it’s not surprising that Jeff Clarke, founder and artistic director of Opera della Luna, said a resounding NO,…

IN 1992 Crazy for You, a “new” Gershwin musical comedy, hit the stage, incorporating some of the songs from the original Girl Crazy and other Gershwin shows with a sort of mix-and-match story influenced by Anything Goes, Calamity Jane etc. Set in Deadrock, Nevada (instead of Deadwood, South Dakota) and involving a young man who…

NOEL Coward’s classic marital comedy Private Lives retains its appeal and enchantment 84 years on from its first appearance, only proving what a keen observer of human nature The Master was. The setting (in Deauville and Paris) and the language may be a bit dated, but the more people change, the more they stay the…

EDWARD Albee’s 1962 play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is widely regarded as one of the very finest American plays of the 20th century, thrust onto the international scene four years later when the golden couple of the time, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, starred in the multi award winning film of the play. Claustrophobically…

FOLLOWING Thursday’s result in Group D of this year’s World Cup in Brazil, there is only one place left where you are guaranteed to see England win the World Cup, and that is at Bristol Old Vic, for the next three weeks. Written ten years ago by Carl Heap and current BOV artistic director Tom…

SURELY one of the most famous of all action-packed adventures, John Buchan’s novel was famously filmed by Hitchcock in 1935, and has been adapted for film, radio and television many times since, with Kenneth More, Orson Welles, Robert Powell, and most recently Rupert Penry-Jones, taking on the role of 37-year-old amateur sleuth and gentleman Richard…

SHAKESPEARE’s The Winter’s Tale was presented by students following the International Acting Course at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.  It was directed by Kim Durham, the course head.   Often described as one of Shakespeare’s problem plays, the production itself was not without its problems, not all of which were solved in a totally satisfactory…

BRISTOL Old Vic Theatre School’s production of London Road is quite extraordinary. The story, both shocking and true, deals with the murder of five prostitutes in Ipswich in 2006, or, to be more precise, the effect these murders had on the residents of the street where they took place; it focuses very much on the…

IFORD Opera’s production of Puccini’s La Rondine marked my first ever visit to Iford. I hope I can be forgiven for thinking I had arrived in paradise; a picnic, a perfect English summer’s evening and the exquisite gardens of Iford Manor. All this and Puccini too – absolute bliss! La Rondine is one of Puccini’s…

NATIONAL Theatre Production: three words which for me ensure quality, high production values, top-class casting, attention to detail at every level, and a great programme, with plenty of quality background material. One Man, Two Guvnors lived up to these standards in every way possible. Most of what I had heard about the play was James…