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…

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…