AUGUST, Osage County began life as a play by Tracy Letts, an actor and playwright member of Chicago’s famous Steppenwolf theatre company, debuted by the company and taken to great acclaim on Broadway, with a Pulitzer Prize along the way. The film is quite clearly a play – in the same way that Edward Albee’s…
SIMON Beaufoy has adapted his much-loved, thoroughly British film, based at the end of the 80s recession, into a play, full of emotion, passion, comedy, pathos and dance. Thankfully, this is not the musical version of The Full Monty, which appeared in 2000, set in Boston, USA, and with new writers; this is the original…
IF you want a career in theatre, never forget that old adage “the show must go on.” It’s an enduring truth and never more so than for the cast of the Arts University Bournemouth’s production of Persuasion, staged at Pavilion Dance from 30th January to 1st February. Helen Watts, artistic director and co-founder of Dorset…
BEN Crocker, former artistic director of Exeter’s Northcott Theatre, was well known for the hilarious pantomimes he wrote, with his father, every Christmas for a decade or more. When he was unceremoniously “let go” the pantos continued, and one of them, Camelot the Panto, is performed this week at North Cadbury, just an A303 away…
A CENTURY-old poster of an improbable opera tour in North Devon and the discovery of a novel based on true events in a Cornish mining community in the 1880s have provided the inspiration for an exciting West Country project. The background story and the genesis of an extraordinary new British independent film were outlined by…
WHETHER it was a cunning plan or pure happenstance, Tarrant Valley Players had a very timely choice with The Three Musketeers for their 2014 pantomime, at the Anne Biddlecombe Hall in Tarrant Keyneston. Fortuitous or intentional, one thing was clear, as I took my seat in the packed hall amid the excited babble of children waiting…
PETER Pan is a familiar story with a difference in Linsey O’Neill’s version for Castle Players, on until Saturday 1st February. It’s set in the present day, Nana is a stuffed dog, and the “dame” (because this IS a pantomime) is Tinkerbill, brother to Tinkerbelle – a guy who’s always wanted to be a fairy…
THEY say the old jokes are the best, and Mark Blackham, who is now surely one of the area’s finest amateur dames, certainly did his history homework when he took on one of the great dame roles, Widow Twankey, in Shaftesbury Arts Centre’s Aladdin, which continues to Saturday 1st February. For his first scene, in…
DAN Evans is not a man to do things by halves. Not only has he adapted the familiar Hans Christian Anderson story The Snow Queen but also written music for it and directed the show for Tisbury Arts Group. It was a huge challenge for the group, performing in a former school hall with few…
SIMON Reade’s adaptation of Penelope Lively’s book Moon Tiger, chosen as a favourite tome by thousands of readers, just does not hang together as a play. The production, which opened in Bath at the start of a seven week provincial tour, is directed by Stephen Unwin and at its centre is Claudia, played by the…