some will always book when the cast includes a star not for the content RALPH Fiennes brings his 2025 Bath Summer Season to a close with Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s commissioned play Small Hotel, and, like the rest of the productions of the season, it has evoked vehemently differing responses. The intention was always to present two…
ALMOST 25 years on, it is still impossible to avoid a tearful gasp at the thought of the events of 11th September 2001, when almost 3,000 people were killed in four co-ordinated attacks on the USA by Islamist terrorists. But in a resilient world, inevitably there were good outcomes for the lucky few, and among…
A NEW stage adaptation of the hugely popular film The Greatest Showman comes to Bristol Hippodrome next year, from 15th March 2026 to 10th May, with a cast led by Oliver Tompsett and Samantha Barks. Based on the 20th Century Studios motion picture with story by Jenny Bicks, songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul…
ANNE-Marie Casey’s vivid, energetic and passionate adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic story Little Women comes to Salisbury for the first showings of the second leg of its 2025 tour, with a largely new cast and all the atmosphere and delight of its Pitlochry debut back in 2022. A judging colleague of mine says nothing…
RUSSIAN playwright Nikolai Gogol perfectly captured the pomposity, predilection for back-handers, flirtatious peccadillos and general self-aggrandisement that is universally noted in local (and national) government in his 1836 play The Government Inspector. The reality of political corruption is as timeless as it is international. There have been many adaptations of the original (just called Inspector…
CELEBRATE Voice, Salisbury’s exciting autumn music festival, returns this year, from 22nd October to 1st November, with a programme that ranges from a new production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly to the golden era of Hollywood, from a singalong Mikado to the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and his quest to retrieve his wife from the…
THE great Old English epic poem of Beowulf gets a remarkable new look when the award-winning circus company Nikki & JD and dance-theatre company Lost Dog strip the story back to its physical essentials in Fireside, an open air circus, dance and theatre performance with fire and live music, on the Pavilion field at Gillingham…
DORCHESTER Corn Exchange gallery is the setting for a powerful and challenging exhibition, Ungrievable Lives, from Saturday 18th to Monday 20th October, open from 10am to 4pm, with free entry. There is also a free panel discussion on Saturday from 4 to 6pm, and a diversity flag workshop on Sunday from 11am. Ungrievable Lives brings…
OPERA Project, the company that first appeared in the South West in 1996 at the Iford Festival, where 14 productions were staged over the next eight years, moved to Bedminster’s Tobacco Factory in 2003 and has been performing in the former cigar packing factory sporadically ever since. The Iford productions saw student friends Jonathan Lyness…
DORSET’s much-loved folk duo Ninebarrow are releasing a new album at the beginning of October, a celebration not only of the vocal harmonies of the two musicians but also of the joy of choirs singing together. The Hour of the Blackbird marks a departure for Jon Whitley and Jay LaBouchardiere, who have worked with two…
TANGLE Theatre brings its unique African-Caribbean style to a new Shakespearean production on tour this autumn, continuing this exciting company’s commitment to presenting classic dramas in new and surprising ways. This year’s tour bring Julius Caesar, to theatres across the region until 25th October. With a cast of five, this fast-moving production drives through the…
SOMERSET artists James and Kate Lynch, who live on a hill overlooking the Somerset Levels, have both had work selected for The Life of the Fields, a major exhibition at St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery in Lymington, one of the most adventurous and prestigious galleries in the area. The exhibition runs to 10th January…
TORONTO-based singer-songwriter Duane Forrest will take the audience on an acoustic journey through the roots of reggae and the global influence of Bob Marley in his show, Bob Marley – How Reggae Changed the World, at two Artsreach concerts – at Chetnole village hall on Sunday 19th October and West Stafford on Monday 20th, both…
THE musical partnership between Leon Hunt and Jason Titley started way back in the early nineties, at some unforgettable late-night festival jams which, inevitably, led to the formation of a band, the ground-breaking and hugely popular ‘progressive’ bluegrass outfit, Daily Planet. Now the pair are back together, coming to Dorset for three dates with Artsreach…
GREAT Expectations is a book that you could say lives up to its title – an epic story of damaged lives and shattered illusions. Despite its scale it lends itself to the intimacy of theatre as the audience will discover when Shaftesbury Arts Centre’s music and drama group stages the story, from 22nd to 25th…
THREE leading local galleries all have exciting exhibitions for the autumn – The Art Stable at Gold Hill Organic Farm, Child Okeford, has a retrospective on the work of the late David Gommon. Sladers Yard at West Bay celebrates mother and daughter Marzia Colonna and Fiamma Colonna Montagu, and the Slade Centre at Gillingham looks…
TWO of Dorset’s best-known folk musicians, Tim Laycock and Alastair Braidwood, have recorded a new album of folk songs, readings and storytelling, Friends & Neighbours. They also have a short tour, including a performance at the Drax Arms at Bere Regis on Tuesday 28th. A much-loved and critically acclaimed folk musician, singer, actor and historian,…
THE October tour of Concerts in the West, at Bridport and Ilminster on Friday 24th October, and Crewkerne on Saturday 25th, brings the exciting female vocal trio Voice to the West Country with a programme that ranges from Hildegard of Bingen to new music by British composers. Victoria Couper, Clemmie Franks and Emily Burn will…
FROM a history of Afghanistan to new books inspired by Jane Austen, whose 250th anniversary is celebrated this year, Wells Festival of Literature’s 2025 line up is as exciting and eclectic as ever. Running from 17th to 25th October, the festival features some hot-off-the-press books, none more so than Entitled: The Rise and Fall of…
JAMES May, the television presenter who owns the Royal Oak pub in Swallowcliffe, between Shaftesbury and Salisbury, will be taking audiences through time and across thousands of miles in his new stage show, with October dates at Bath, Bristol and Southampton. The Top Gear and Grand Tour star is presenting a very different – and…
FOR many years, one of the great teats a group of us enjoyed was to go on Shrove Tuesday to a friend’s house to enjoy home-made pancakes. Good cook as she was, we were never offered the first pancake made, because she said it was never up to the standard of those that followed. Anyone…
WELSH storyteller Shon-Dale Jones is back on tour with a new show, Stories From An Invisible Town, with dates from 3rd October to 18th November across the south and west. Shôn is first and foremost a storyteller. He’s honest, inventive, and deeply human … curious, restless, wide-eyed, offbeat and resonant. His work combines heartfelt, funny…
CHARLOTTE Bronte’s Jane Eyre is one of the most famous, widely raid and critically acclaimed novels in the English language – it is also one of the most frequently adapted for stage and screen. A new play by Live Wire and Rough House theatre takes a different approach comes to the West Country on tour…
THERE was a world premiere at Strode Theatre in Street on Saturday, but one that arrived without fanfare and played out to a sadly small, but wildly enthusiastic audience. Baroque opera lends itself to fun interpretation, and for 40 years, ever since Nick Hytner’s indelible Xerxes at ENO, directors have included quirky elements to inventive…
YEOVIL Literary Festival, now in its 12th year, has become one of the most eagerly anticipated book events in the region. This year the festival runs from 17th to 27th October, at venues including Westlands, Yeovil Library and St John the Baptist Church. The line-up of best-sellers, Booker Prize-winners and exciting new and established writers…
SHERBORNE International Film Festival returns over the weekend 16th to 19th October at the Powell Theatre in Abbey Road, with the usual compelling mix of classic and new foreign films, including the multi Oscar winning Korean black comedy Parasite and Indochine, an epic drama set in south east Asia in the years before the Vietnam…
EXETER’s Northcott Theatre has announced its first 2026 Made By Exeter Northcott production – Forever Young by Erik Gedeon is a musical play that blends big laughs, heartfelt moments and iconic songs. The cast will include South West actors from past Northcott productions and pantomimes and the production will be the first musical play to…
NOEL Coward’s timeless comedy Blithe Spirit was just the thing war-ravaged Londoners needed in 1941, and it might just provide the lift we need in these crazy, frightening days 84 years later. Anthony Banks’ new production is played out on a stylish set designed by Terry Parsons, an opulent Art Deco drawing room with its…
GALLOWS humour is a curious aspect of the human psyche – laughter is the best antidote to fear, probably. The laughs are dark and the subject matter even darker when Ha Hum Ah Theatre brings its new play, Making A Killing, on tour locally, with dates starting on 28th October at Taunton, and coming to…
THERE is apparently a powerful connection between medicine and comedy – look at the number of doctors and other medics who have combined stand-up with their work, or moved over entirely from the operating theatre to the performing theatre. Take Georgie Carroll, a nurse who has been playing to sell-out audiences for some years and…
THE most popular films with Moviola audiences for October continue to be Mr Burton, the story of the young Richard Burton and his inspirational teacher (whose name he took), and The Penguin Lessons, with a third in-demand film, Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag. This is a spy thriller, written by David Koepp, starring Cate Blanchett and…
GLOBAL Majority artists take centre stage at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre throughout October in We Rise, a vibrant group exhibition showcasing award-winning and emerging artists across painting, printmaking, installation, textiles and sculpture. The exhibition is part of Black History Month 2025 and highlights the creativity and contribution of artists whose voices are often underrepresented in…
PORTLAND, that mysterious, craggy, romantic island of rock that is barely attached to Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, is a constantly inspiring place for artists, and a new exhibition at the Drill Hall Gallery in Easton Lane and Tout Quarry Sculpture Park and Nature Reserve, explores the responses of a group of sculptors to its geology, history…
OSCAR-winning actor Ralph Fiennes completes his season of productions at the Theatre Royal Bath, starring in Small Hotel, by Rebecca Lenkiewicz and starring Ralph Fiennes, in its world premiere from Friday 3rd to Saturday 18th October. The cast also includes the acclaimed stage and screen actress Francesca Annis, Rosalind Eleazar and Rachel Tucker. Larry is…
BOURNEMOUTH Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor Mark Wigglesworth will be conducting 22 performances across the new 2025-26 season, which takes the region’s major orchestra to venues in major towns and smaller centres including Bristol, Exeter, Sherborne and Taunton, as well as its home at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre, where the season opens on Wednesday 1st October….
IF you are a fan of the wonderful Natalie Haynes and her standing up for the classic radio shows, the names Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Artemis, Apollo et al are probably familiar. This autumn, the West Country’s favourite comedy theatre company takes up the challenge … but have Living Spit bitten off more than they can…
AN exhibition, at Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury, from 27th September to 10th January 2026, A Life Outside: Hope Bourne on Exmoor, offers a new appraisal of the work and life of the Exmoor writer and artist. Created in partnership with The Exmoor Society, which cares for The Hope L Bourne Collection, the exhibition considers…
WE all have our favourite shoes – they may be red carpet-worthy, six-inch high Jimmy Choos or comfortable if unglamorous Allbirds, but shoes follow the footprints of human history. Fashionable or functional, delicate or dependable, shoes are an essential part of our lives. And while other brands may come and go, one name remains proudly…