THE Ustinov Studio has another triumph on its hands with the UK premiere of Christopher Durang’s award-winning comedy, which has Chekhov’s plays at its core. Best known for his absurdist plays, Durang brilliantly weaves academic theatrical parents, Chekhovian motifs and the fears and certainties of getting old into the lives of three siblings, Sonia the…
TWO images will remain in my mind from this year’s Salisbury International Arts Festival, and particularly from the middle weekend Festival of Ideas, which had the theme Our Fragile World. The images are of Gaia, Luke Jerram’s seven metre diameter globe based on NASA images of the planet from the Apollo space mission, and of…
DRIVING home from Salisbury on Saturday night we were thrilled to see a substantial flock of colourfully striped tigers on a field by Charnage Hill – that’s the power of art! Lesley Bates’ production of John Finnemore’s A Flock of Tigers has already won Salisbury Studio Theatre awards for top play at both Totton and…
JOHN Hartoch’s adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, for the 2019 Bristol Old Vic Theatre School summer tour, also draws its inspiration from the style of Kneehigh and some recent pick-and-mix productions. The student company has taken 11 of the 24 original stories, and every night eight of them will be performed, at the…
ALTHOUGH opera purists and some serious musicians dismiss La Boheme as a lightweight work with only limited merit, [composer Benjamin Britten disliked it intensely], audiences in general have taken the opposite view for more than a century and a quarter, making it one of the most popular and often presented of operas. When Opera Up…
TO quote David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers the producers of this play: “This is the best British comedy ever written”. I think there are several other plays that would be legitimate challengers for that accolade, but there is no doubting that Willy Russell’s story of Rita, a 26-year- old ill-educated Liverpudlian hairdresser seeking to expand…
IT took 6,000 years to form the peat bogs of the Somerset Levels. It takes a few hours to dig them up. Human beings have believed for centuries that they are masters of the world, that they can dominate nature, that they have an absolute right to exploit every aspect of the planet’s riches. But climate…
IN the 2019 Salisbury Festival, with a celebratory theme of the moon walk 50th anniversary, a concert in the city’s magnificent cathedral, with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra playing Holst’s Planets Suite, had to be a high point. Added into the mix was Luke Jerram’s seven-metre rotating globe Gaia, featuring NASA imagery of the earth’s surface…
WHAT better way to start the open air touring season than with the scintillating 2019 version of the alfresco Shakespearean favourite, performed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men? Coinciding with Salisbury Festival, their Rack Close performance on Friday delighted a large audience from the opening song to the closing moments. Peter Stickney’s witty, incisive and clever…
IAIN Burnside turned the clock back to one of Bath Festival’s greatest moments – Century Songs in 2000 – when he was reunited with William Dazeley and Sophie Daneman at Komedia for the 2019 festival. They were joined by Somerset-born mezzo Marta Fontanals-Simmons and Neil Brand for two performances exploring the composers of Hollywood scores….