YEOVIL’S intimate Swan Theatre, whose stage is home to some of the region’s finest non professional theatrical productions, is celebrating 50 years of live drama with a January festival, and it starts by allowing a multi award winning actor to realise a long held dream. Patrick Knox will takes the title role in Jeffrey Bernard…
DORSET folk musician Alastair Braidwood is leading several folk events in Dorchester over the weekend 9th to 11th January, starting with an evening of European folk dancing at the Brownsword Hall at Poundbury on Friday from 7pm. The weekend is a celebration of folk music and traditional customs with something for everyone, whatever their age…
COMEDY classical music quartet Graffiti Classics explode onto the stages of Dorset halls to launch the Artsreach 2026 programme. The three date tour starts on Thursday 8th at Wootton Fitzpaine village hall, followed by Lytchett Matravers on Friday 9th and the Corn Exchange at Blandford on Saturday 10th, all at 7.30pm. With 16 strings, eight…
A WORLDWIDE hit show that taps into the enduring love for one of the great icons of 1950s rock and roll, Buddy Holly, comes to Bath Theatre Royal from 13th to 17th January as part of a 2026 tour. Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story has been seen by an estimated 22 million people around…
BATH Literature Festival has announced its first event, a pre-festival evening with historian Tom Holland, co-host of the hit podcast The Rest is History, at Bath Forum on Friday 22nd May at 7pm. Travel back to the Roman Empire as Tom Holland celebrates his translation for Penguin Classics of Suetonius’s influential Lives of the Twelve Caesars….
BATH Festivals has announced some of the highlights of next year’s international music festival, with tickets for five concerts released early – a perfect post Christmas gift for the music-lover in your life! The international music festival will run from Saturday 30th May to Sunday 7th June, and the first of the newly released events…
THOUGHT the dastardly Captain Hook had met his watery fate at the end of Peter Pan’s adventures? … think again. Perhaps unsurprisingly he found a way to stay alive in the water at the end of the plank he was forced to walk, and, after desolate years of fury and plotting, HE’S BACK! And when…
BRISTOL’s historic Old Vic breaks with its usual non-celebrity tradition this year, bringing in local star, comedian, actor and singer Jayde Adams to lead a terrific cast of actor-musicians in a musical retelling of a story that started its life at the Llandoger Trow, just yards down the street. It’s 15 years since King Street…
THE children whose first view of live theatre was watching Little Bulb perform Antarctica at Bristol Old Vic in 2013 are in their late teens now, but possibly are still theatregoers, thanks to that magical experience. Now a new generation is watching a new cast perform the play again, and it is just as enchanting…
THE story of Rapunzel, the girl imprisoned in a high tower by a possessive witch, dates back into the mists of time, but it has lost neither its appeal nor its impact, as the new version by Sharon Clark for the Tobacco Factory Christmas show proves. The five-strong cast of actor-musicians excitingly demonstrate that there…
AFTER what seems like centuries of watching and reviewing pantomimes, it is always a great thrill to spot a superstar performance on a local stage, and wait until the national critics and award-giving organisations put that name in their best-of-the-year lists. Salisbury Playhouse’s inventive, colourful, energetic and 100% fun version of Jack and the Beanstalk…
THE classic sitcom that made Martin Clunes a star comes to the stage of the Barn Theatre at Cirencester – Men Behaving Badly, by the show’s original creator Simon Nye, will be the adventurous little theatre’s first Built By Barn production of 2026, running from 30th January to 7th March Men Behaving Badly, the play,…
THE third Shaftesbury Festival of Baroque takes place at the arts centre, St Peter’s Church, St James’s Church and other venues from 20th to 26th January. The programme ranges from film to dance to a “battle” of 17th century playwrights. Professional musicians from the region and beyond (even Cumbria) will be taking part in this…
LIVING Spit are back on tour in January with their own unique take on one of the best-loved fairytales – Beauty and the Beast. Written by co-founders, Stu McLoughlin and the late and much-missed Howard Coggins, this playful, updated version of the 18th century French fable is at the Princess Theatre at Burnham-on-Sea on 8th…
ONE of the cliches of the media at the turn of the year is to run features that riff on the theme of “new year, new you” – Moviola doesn’t need memes and mundanities as there are always new films to excite its rural audiences, and this new year is no exception. The first quarter…
IN 1880, a famous (and frequently censored) Italian political satirist, Carlo Collodi, created a story about a poor woodcarver who made a wooden boy puppet as a companion for his old age. That puppet, Pinocchio, wanted to be a real boy, but he had to contend with a nose that grew every time he told a…
IF you are wondering whether your little children are old enough to enjoy a full-blown pantomime this Christmas, but would like to take them to a live show, the place to go is Bath Theatre Royal’s dedicated youth space, The Egg, and its new show Snow Mice, on various days and times until 11th January….