JUKE box musicals, featuring the hits of a single artist or band, can either be loosely biographical, as with Jersey Boys, or completely fictitious, with the songs interwoven into the narrative, as with Mamma Mia or We Will Rock You. 20th Century Boy is one of the former, using a mildly contrived plot where Rolan…

IT seems incredible that it’s almost 80 years ago since Noel Coward’s plays Tonight at 8:30 were last performed together – when The Master and Gertrude Lawrence starred in the 1936 London production. Fortunately, that omission has been corrected by Blanche McIntyre with the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton and English Touring Theatre, and the series…

THE Bristol Old Vic Theatre School summer tour always provides audiences around the south and west a first chance to see students from the world famous school at the start of their careers, and this year’s production has an added twist. Director Christopher Scott has double-cast Peter Meyer’s translation of Feydeau’s famous farce Sauce for…

SHERBORNE Abbey Festival came to a glorious and triumphant conclusion at the abbey with a collection of “party pieces” by the Elizabethan composer William Byrd. It may seem an odd phrase to describe music by the serious Byrd, who was well-known as a devout Catholic at a time when to be a supporter of the…

Sherborne Festival Chorus Chamelion Arts Orchestra, leader Simon Baggs Naomi Harvey (soprano), Janet Shell (Mezzo Soprano), Joseph Cornwell (Tenor), Peter Savidge (Baritone), Craig Bissex (Baritone), Jeremy Birchall (Bass) Conductor, Paul Ellis ELGAR’S oratorio The Apostles had its genesis as early as the composer’s schooldays, when a teacher put the idea into the future composer’s head that…

MALCOLM Archer is one of the world’s leading church musicians and his recital on Bank Holiday Monday was bound to be one of the highlights of this year’s Sherborne Abbey Festival. Although the Abbey looked spectacular, with the sun streaming through the stained glass, our eyes were rarely drawn far from the big screen. This…

BEN Craw’s recital in the Tindall Recital Hall, Sherborne School was given as part of the fifteenth Sherborne Abbey Festival. The venue itself was ideal, and, blessed with perfect weather and a good sized audience, we could be pretty sure that we were in for a lovely afternoon. His choice of programme, Schumann’s “Liederkreis” (Op….

“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…