“TO begin at the beginning”, it began, and with that short phrase we were hushed into silence, the house lights snapped off and a blue moonlit night took over the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack auditorium of Bath’s Theatre Royal, as the haunting welsh lilt of actor Owen Teale transported us back 60 years to a…
THE Jiving Lindy Hoppers and Harry Strutters Hot Rhythm Orchestra performed to a capacity audience in the Big School Room, Sherborne School as part of the fifteenth annual Sherborne Abbey Festival. Superbly fronted by compere / vocalist (and occasional trumpet player) Megs Etherington, we were treated to an action packed show celebrating the music, dance…
WHEN you think of the flute, you automatically think of James Galway. Indeed most of us would be very hard pressed to think of anyone else at all. It is quite remarkable to realise that the name of someone who came to prominence as long ago as 1975 should still be almost synonymous with the…
DORSET-based physical theatre company Angel Exit gave the first performance of their eagerly-awaited new piece, The Ballad of Martha Brown, in the atmospheric setting of Manor Farm Barn as part of the first Deverills Festival. And any apprehension that it might not draw a large audience was quickly dispelled as the organisers had to draft…
NOEL Coward wrote the five-scene one-acter Still Life as part of his ten-play Tonight at 8.30 sequence, first seen in 1935. And although the whole series is a rarity (though you can see it in its entirety at the Nuffield in Southampton until 24th May), Still Life became one of the most famous love stories…
TO be sitting in the gorgeously ornate interior of Sherborne Abbey on a sunny May afternoon, the sunlight filtering through the stained glass, was almost treat enough: but then the eight young ensemble singers of the London-based Fieri Consort diffidently assembled on the stage, and, without the guidance of a conductor, launched into the Choral…
IT was still light outside the Big School Room at Sherborne School as Stacey Kent and her band took to the stage. But the mood was a little after midnight with Stacey’s smoky vocals, Jim Tomlinson’s sultry saxophone and a sophisticated mix of old favourites, bossa nova and new songs. Stacey Kent is one of…
THE glorious architecture of Sherborne Abbey and its fine artworks from across the centuries, including Marzia Colonna’s 2004 sculpture of St Aldhelm, provided the perfect setting for an illustrated talk by the Bishop of Salisbury, the Right Rev Nicholas Holtam, on the opening day of the 2014 Sherborne Abbey Festival. The Bishop’s talk on The…
FULL marks to Sherborne School Swing Band, whose dazzling performance on the opening day of the fifteenth Sherborne Abbey Festival was given before an enthusiastic and rather more than capacity audience. Despite extra chairs being magicked out from behind the woodwork by beaming, blazered boys, there was standing room only in the Tindall Recital Hall…
EIGHT actors are currently touring the country in a new play by Stella Feehily, urging their audiences not to sit and watch but to get up and fight. The fight is for the existence of the National Health Service and the play, This May Hurt a Bit, is a brilliantly conceived work of agit-prop that…