DYLAN Thomas’s 1954 radio play Under Milk Wood, and its many subsequent stage productions, lulls its audiences into the bucolic rhythms of an imaginary Welsh fishing village, weaving its way round quickly-familiar streets as it introduces the colourful characters. Set over the course of one ordinary day, it peeps into the life of the blind…

“NOBODY puts Baby in the corner.” A fairly simple statement, about the main character in a 1987 film, which provoked the biggest cheer and longest ovation of this evening’s stage presentation of Dirty Dancing at Bristol, from an audience most of which was very familiar with every line, move and song in the story. Having…

YOU just never know what will appeal to an audience these days. Ayckbourn used to be a sure fire hit, but recent productions both professional and amateur, have seen bank of empty seats. When Yeovil’s Swan Theatre decided to perform the old favourite She Stoops to Conquer, with Goldsmith no longer on the set book…

MARK Ravenhill’s stunning adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s A Life of Galileo was first staged at Stratford-upon-Avon a year ago, and now the production, by Roxana Silbert for the RSC, has been revived by Theatre Royal Bath and Birmingham Repertory Company. Performed almost entirely in modern dress on a set using Go-Pak tables, steel mobile safety…

IF you stand beside the Bincombe Bumps, neolithic barrows between Dorchester and Weymouth, at mid-day, you will hear music. Well, that’s what the legend says – and that legend is just one of the aspects of the South Dorset Ridgeway captured in felt and textile art at Land Felt, the spring 2014 touring exhibition from…

AS UKIP posters appear across the nation, Alan Ayckbourn’s 2011 play Neighbourhood Watch is a timely reminder about what can happen even with the best of intentions. Martin Massie and his older sister Hilda have lived together all their lives, since their mother died giving birth to Martin and their father some years later. They…

“WHERE ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise,” as Thomas Grey elegiacally said. Not the sort of thing The Master opined, but he instead gave us a sort of Bliss that has endured 90 years of performance and still turns up trumps. The Street Theatre production of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever, on stage in…

FRANK Marcus’s 50-year-old play The Killing of Sister George, staged by Taunton Thespians until 15th March, comes from a very different time, but one which includes eerie predictions of life in the 21st century. District nurse Sister George is a favourite character on a BBC radio soap, but the powers that be decide to bump…

YEOVIL might have an exceptionally high concentration of talented music theatre performers, but gospel music and its descendant, soul, is not what the area is known for. So it’s all the more remarkable that the long-established YAOS chose Sister Act for its big show of 2014. The company was delighted to be one of the…

AMERICAN playwright Dan LeFranc drew on his own experiences of life when he created his “48-hour play” The Big Meal, which opens the Ustinov Studio’s three-play American season, on stage until 5th April. The stage of the intimate theatre has been stripped bare, tongue-and-grooved wood to half way up the wall, banquettes round the edges,…