TONY and Gill Horitz, founders of the Wimborne-based State of Play, devised The Gathering from letters collected from local families. Performed to a packed audience in the north transept of Wimborne Minster, after its premiere at Holtwood Church earlier in the year, it tells the stories of two Dorset soldiers who died in the conflict. …
AUDIENCES at Bristol Old Vic can see the world premiere performances of A Monster Calls until 16th June, when it moves to London’s Old Vic. Directed by Sally Cookson, this first stage adaptation of the book started by Siobhan Dowd and completed by Patrick Ness is the story of 13-year-old Conor and how he deals…
DIRECTOR Paul Clarkson has chosen the inventive and challenging Helen Edmundson version of The Mill on the Floss, made for Shared Experience, for the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School summer tour. As with all Shared Experience productions, the story is told on many levels, transporting the audience into the mind of heroine Maggie Tulliver as…
THE “Summer Show” genre has all but disappeared, but its demise doesn’t stop an audience richly enjoying a feel-good, lightweight summery romp – and that’s just what they get with Love on the Links, a new play adapted from the words of PG Wodehouse, on in Salisbury until 23rd June. After a week of violent…
CHARLES Dickens’ classic tale of hope, disappointment and love, Great Expectations, is a favourite for stage adaptation, and you won’t see a better one than the Malvern Theatre/Tilted Wig current tour. Ken Bentley has worked with Katherine Senior (best known as actress and writer with Creative Cow) on bringing the story of Pip, Estella, Miss…
IT’S an unforgettable moment when a performer comes down from the stage into the audience and sings a song. I saw David Bowie sing Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud from the stalls at Taunton, and now Gretchen Peters sing Love That Makes a Cup of Tea from the front row of St George’s in Bristol,…
DONNIE and Zak are sister and brother. Zak is older and yearns to be a musician, but he knows that Donnie has more talent. She has “the voice.” Even with their old “salvaged” piano, with its critically missing middle B, you know that Donnie can sing. It’s almost as if she was born to it…
BATH Komedia was packed for the festival concert by Kathryn Tickell and her new band, The Darkening. It was only the third performance from the new lineup, and the leader was suffering from the after effects of a throat infection, so she sang less than usual. Thankfully it did not inhibit her signature anecdotes. Her…
IF anything good could be said about Bristol Colston Hall’s connection to slavery (it is named after wealthy slave trader Edward Colston) it was that the audience at Joan Baez’s Fare Thee Well concert in the city was treated to one of her rare performances of No More Auction Block/O Freedom – to exorcise the…
FELIX Humble, a theoretical astrophysicist, could blame his inability to connect to the real world on a total lack of copy from his parents. Charlotte Jones’s extraordinary play Humble Boy starts on the day Felix comes home to the funeral of his father. Loosely based on Hamlet, the play has Stoppardian and Ayckbournian moments, but…