TELEVISION scriptwriter Reginald Rose was called to serve on a New York jury in 1954, and his experiences in the locked jury room inspired him to write what became his best-known play, performed countless times on stages across the English speaking world and famously filmed with Henry Fonda in the lead. It is a timelessly…
TWENTY years ago the members of Mere Amateur Dramatic Society staged Peter Gordon’s spoof murder mystery Murdered to Death, to great acclaim by the audience who named it the funniest play the company has ever done. So it’s no surprise that director Chris Wood (who played the more-than-bumbling Inspector Pratt in the 2003 production) decided…
ONE of the criticisms leveled at the musical Annie is that it is too sweet and sentimental, and to an extent that is probably true, which only goes to prove how far this feelgood musical adaptation of the adventures of Little Orphan Annie, the comic strip that was printed in American newspapers from 1924 to…
AS a nation, we love quizzes – look how many people enjoy weekly or monthly pub contests! And the television block-buster Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (which ran from 1998 to 2014) was the biggest quiz of them all, with the biggest prize. It was fun to watch, amusing to see if you could…
IN the days before genetic modification and new methods of long-term storage robbed us of the pleasure of enjoying fruit and vegetables at a specific time of year, as they came into season, you looked forward with eager anticipation to the arrival of the first English tomatoes, fresh peas, kidney and broads beans. Fortunately those…
MINIMA – Mick Frangou, Greg Hall, Alex Hogg and Andy Taylor – made their Take Art debut providing original live music for a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 silent film The Lodger – A Story of the London Fog at Caryford Hall. The Bristol-based quartet plays instruments including cello, double bass, regular and baritone guitars,…
EMILE Zola’s 1868 novel Therese Raquin scandalised readers at the time, with its depiction of adultery and murder. Now Fiona Ross has adapted the story, and directs her own version with performing arts students from AUB, setting the action in immediately post-war Paris, and in the land of the wicked dead. Played without an interval,…
IBSEN’S play A Doll’s House, first performed in 1879, has been translated, adapted and produced ever since, providing theatre with one of the great female roles in Nora Helmer. Two recent English language versions have come from Bryony Lavery and from Frank McGuiness. It is the latter that catapulted the glitteringly charismatic Janet McTeer to international…
IT is rather interesting to see a new play twice within a few weeks – the first time as a brand new, hot off the press production, and the second out on tour. I’m Sorry Prime Minister, I Can’t Quite Remember opened at the Barn Theatre, Cirencester, in mid-September and went on tour (to Bath…
SINCE 1956, when local musical society BLOC took the mad gamble to take their production of The Gypsy Baron into the 2,000 seater Bristol Hippodrome, they have seen many changes both in the ownership of that flagship theatre and in theatrical musical tastes. Those days, when the management was keen to create and preserve a…