IT’S arguable whether George Orwell’s most revered book can really work on the stage, but there’s no doubt this adaptation at Salisbury Playhouse succeeded in capturing much of the raw power of the story. Orwell’s chilling version of a dystopian future was written in 1948 and now projects haunting echoes of Soviet era secret police;…
FROM the first moment, as the terrific band strikes up Frank Loesser’s overture and the curtains open to a stunning tableau, the scene is set for an evening of stylish delight at the Octagon in Yeovil as YAOS embarks on only its second Guys and Dolls. Directed and choreographed by Alan Spencer with Matthew Holmes…
Wagner: Die Meistersinger Overture Wagner: Das Rheingold: Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla Wagner: Tannhäuser: Grand March Wagner: Tristan and Isolde: Liebestod Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No 3 in D minor THE Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s 2013/14 season at Poole Lighthouse got under way in a thrilling concert featuring Valentina Lisitsa, the Ukraine-born pianist often described…
AS someone who still owns the original, white-sleeved, album, starring Julie Covington as Eva and a young Colm Wilkinson as Che; who remembers David Essex and Elaine Paige being cast in the stage show reach newspaper front pages in the 1970s; and who loved the chain of pop videos that was Alan Parker’s film of…
DAPHNE Du Maurier’s chilling mystery Jamaica Inn was famously adapted for the stage by David Horlock in 1990, the artistic director of Salisbury Playhouse who was killed in a traffic accident only days after the play had opened. Now the version has been revived by the Studio Theatre in Ashley Road, the amateur company of…
BLACKMAIL is often touted as the first British “talkie”, as Director Alfred Hitchcock got permission during filming to make parts of it with sound, and ended up recording sound for most of the film. It was actually the third or fourth film released with sound; two versions came out in June 1929, to allow for…
AS part of this year’s Arts by the Sea Festival, Fuel Theatre Company have blacked out a large room in the Pavilion Dance complex and invite the audience to sit in complete darkness for an hour, wearing wireless headphones, and be transported to another “very similar” room. Director David Rosenberg, a doctor and qualified anaesthetist,…
CHARLES Dickens’ famously tense and spooky novel Great Expectations has been revised by Neil Bartlett for his new production at Bristol Old Vic, performed by nine actors on a sparsely furnished stage in which the soundscape is as important as the props might usually be. It’s a bold reading of the famous story, rich in…
THE beautiful barns of Ashley Wood Farm near Tisbury were a home-from- home for the Creative Cow company, whose rehearsals are held in a Devon agricultural building with perplexed cows looking on. On 29th September the new production of Shakespeare’s farcical comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor was performed at the “new” Tisbury venue after…
YOU don’t expect to go to the nightclub/ disco/farmer’s market venue in Wincanton on a Sunday afternoon to see an Edinburgh Fringe style – and standard – show, but that’s what happened on 29th September, when Fringe Files put on their inventive play UnderLINE. The matinee started with Stuart Lyddon’s solo piece Sorry, the unfolding…