THE audience for the Trowbridge Chorus spring concert, in the elegant and historic setting of St James Church, had a double treat with the baroque glories of masterpieces by Vivaldi and Handel. The concert, conducted by the benign but disciplined Graham Dalby, opened with Vivaldi’s Gloria, a work of transcendent music – even saying “Vivaldi’s Gloria”…
BURYING the Dead, presented by Ceruleo on their short tour of west-country venues as part of the current Concerts in the West season, was a new play by Clare Norburn with music by the late 17th century English composer Henry Purcell. The author describes Burying the Dead as a concert-play and imagines Purcell on his…
THE shiny new Bridge Theatre, across the Thames from the Tower of London, between Tower Bridge and the City Hall, has chosen Barney Norris’s Nightfall as the third play in the opening season. Expectations were high for the prolific young writer’s new work, once again set in the rural south and focussing on current threats…
BY the time audiences saw Joe Orton’s final play, What the Butler Saw, in 1969, the playwright was already dead, murdered by a jealous lover in lurid circumstances. Four years later Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus was first staged. Both plays parody the good old English Whitehall farce with its multiplicity of doors and dropped trousers,…
IT would be foolish of me to simply review this play, which I should admit is probably my favourite play, and certainly the play I have seen the most. I happened to be living and working in London when it first opened more than 20 years ago, and managed to see most of the 26…
REMEMBER the hope and excitement that followed the Labour victory in 1997, just days after Katrina and the Waves sang Love Shine a Light and won Eurovision for the UK? That’s when the Wardrobe Ensemble’s award-winning devised play, set in a failing comprehensive, all starts. It’s also the day that Tobias, a German exchange teacher,…
NOW in its 19th year, Sherborne Abbey Festival was founded in 2000 to celebrate music within the inspiring setting of local historic churches, schools and, of course, the Abbey itself. And as this year’s publicity tells us, with up to 70% of the performances being completely free, the festival can rightly claim to be one…
THERE was a time when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was not only the world’s most famous (fictional) consulting detective, but was also taken very seriously. You could call that multi-book-play-film version Sherlock Holmes Mk 1, pre-Moffat and Gatiss – but post-Moffat/Gatiss’s sexy, tousle-headed Sherlock with his swirling overcoat, quickfire dialogue and dazzling digital…
BATH’s Ustinov Theatre, under the artistic direction of Laurence Boswell, has been hailed as the country’s leading studio theatre, and the opening of Samuel D Hunter’s The Whale will undoubtedly underpin that well-deserved reputation. Running two hours without interval, it charts a week in the life of Charlie, a morbidly obese man who lives in…
THE Representation of the People Act which enfranchised British women over the age of 30 and with property rights had been passed in February 1918, but by Christmas 1918, the completed ballot papers for the first general election to include their votes lay uncounted. Progress had been, and many believe continues to be, astonishingly slow….