THE Proms are always special. They are unlike any other concert series, partly because of the venue with its unique acoustic and atmosphere, and partly because this truly is the world’s greatest music festival. This year’s Proms, back with an audience (albeit not full capacity) after 2020’s weird empty hall, were always going to be…
THERE are few things about the stresses and strains of Christmas that Alan Ayckbourn hasn’t chronicled. Our most prolific playwright has used the traditional gathering as the setting for many of his plays, and the first one was Absurd Person Singular, now almost 50 years old and on tour in a production by London Classic…
IF there is one thing that we can probably all agree on at present, it is that we need to laugh. So huge thanks to the ever-inventive New Old Friends for their latest show, a delicious send-up of the classic Hollywood golden era film noir. You’ve got the hardbitten private eye, the ditsy scared blonde,…
WHAT is a three-inch fool? According to Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew, it’s anyone of small stature, but that’s not a requirement for membership of the touring theatre company that takes its name. Founded in 2015, the Fools have built up a keen following around the UK with their unique Shakespearean productions, concentrating…
MISCHIEF Theatre, best known for their hilarious plays that go wrong, branched out into non-spoof in 2019 with Groan Ups, just in time for the start of the lockdown season. Now the show is out on the road and in Bath until 21st August. Following in the footsteps of Dennis Potter and Denise Deegan, Mischief’s…
AMATEUR Players of Sherborne was the first non-professional company in our region to mount a show following the first lockdown of 2020, and their Waiting for Godot in the Paddock Gardens was such a success that they decided on the same venue for a Shakespearean compilation this year. Dress rehearsing on a beautiful Saturday afternoon,…
ONE of the best-known songs from Handel’s Acis and Galatea could have been the theme for this year’s Dorset Opera Festival. “Happy, happy we!” really summed up the atmosphere in the Coade Hall at Bryanston School. Opera lovers from across Dorset, starved of live performance for so long, turned out to enjoy a very different…
TWO of England’s greatest comics, Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel, born a year apart, boarded the same steamer, the converted cattle ship SS Cairnrona, to make a new life across the pond. Both were part of the travelling vaudeville company, Fred Karno’s Army. Laurel (then known as Stanley Jefferson), was Chaplin’s understudy. Charlie and Stan,…
AT first sight, you might think that Emlyn Williams’ 1935 drama Night Must Fall would be dated. The grumpy old hypochondriac in her wheel-chair, lording it over her staff and her penniless niece-companion, the bumbling Scotland Yard detective, the middle-aged bachelor looking for a wife and the cliche setting of the house in the middle…
ILLYRIA’s Wind in the Willows was one of the highlights of summer 2020, a colourful, funny show that told the beloved story well, and featured a brilliant Mr (Boris Johnson) Toad. We took a friend with two young children for their first ever open-air show and they loved it. This year, we took another friend…