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…
WHEN I heard, at the end of last year, that Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones were going to be directed by Mark Rylance in a new production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Vic on London’s South Bank in September 2013, I booked my seats immediately. So, with expensive tickets waiting to…
THE Wars of the Roses surge across the stage in the Shakespeare’s Globe on Tour’s tumultuous Henry VI plays, at Bath Theatre Royal until Saturday 28th October – the final night of a tour that started in June. On the last day, all three plays – Harry the Sixth, The Houses of York and Lancaster…
SHAKESPEARE’S Globe on Tour has had a busy summer, performing the three parts of Henry VI in some evocative places, including the battlefields of Towton, Tewkesbury, St Albans and Barnet. Until Saturday 28th September, the company is in the more conventional surroundings of Bath’s Theatre Royal, where the Bard’s rarely-performed trilogy is on stage, nightly…
Pencoweth is a heart-warming tale of 1850s Cornish life, full of original music and ballads and set in the harbour of a Cornish fishing village. Two young fishermen set out to test their respective fiancees prior to the impending weddings. But their disguises and deceptions have a devastating impact on the community and they are…
NOT Just for Sundays is a music theatre piece by Dorset born composer Graham Stansfield. Inspired by Sir Roy Strong’s book on the history and current state of our churches, the piece was given, I believe, only its second performance in Broadstone last Saturday. The performance had already begun as we entered. The young lady…
OVER recent years, my dad and I have slowly developed an appreciation for each other’s musical tastes and, while some of the CDs lurking amongst his collection are, in my eyes, slightly dubious, I was really pleased that for the first time last Friday night, we set off to a gig together. The audience that…
AT the end of a powerful performance of his book Private Peaceful at the Octagon in Yeovil on Saturday, Michael Morpurgo congratulated the organisers of the town’s first ever Literary Festival – and the packed house proved the success of the venture. The Devon-based writer and former children’s laureate was joined on stage by acapella…
THE New Forest is an ancient and mysterious place, full of legends, memories and voices. It is a special place and it is different. As the novelist LP Hartley famously wrote at the beginning of The Go-Between, “The past is another country – they do things differently there.” Karen (Melody Brown) has fled the stresses…
THE Dorset-based State of Play company describes its work as “creative journeys through drama and the arts” and its modus operandi is to settle on a theme, research it and create a production through workshops and improvisation. It is a tried and tested method which can and has produced powerful drama and compelling storytelling, and…