What's on in pictures

Visions of Portland

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…

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The Addams Family, Bath Theatre Royal, Bath

FOR a TV series that lasted only two series – 64 episodes between 1964 and 1966 – The Addams Family has remarkable longevity. Helped by continual showings on late night TV and four films featuring the characters, it was almost inevitable that someone (Andrew Lippa) would add music and, adapt (Marchal; Brickman and Rick Elice)…

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Calamity Jane, Bristol Hippodrome

MORE contradictory stories and legends – including how she acquired the nickname of Calamity Jane – have probably been told about Martha Jane Canary than of any other frontierswoman of the second half of the 19th century. Thanks to Jean Arthur’s portrayal in Cecil B DeMille’s The Plainsman, and the wonderfully effervescent Doris Day, in…

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Starter for Ten, Bristol Old Vic and touring

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…

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Mitsu Trio on short tour

THE Mitsu Trio come to Dorset and Somerset on Friday 26th and Saturday 27th September for the first dates in the autumn season of Concerts in the West. The series, as always, begins at Bridport Arts Centre, with a coffee-time concert, at 11.30am, followed by Ilminster Arts Centre that evening and The Dance House at…

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Artist in residence’s surreal whimsy by the sea

ILLUSTRATOR Gabrielle Parker’s delightful, surreal and whimsical creations will be celebrated at this year’s Arts by the Sea, the South West’s biggest free celebration of art, culture, people and place, returning to Bournemouth from Friday 26th to Sunday 28th September. Gabrielle Parker, the 2025 Artist in Residence, is an Arts University Bournemouth graduate, who creates…

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Stories to make you laugh and cry

WELSH storyteller Shon-Dale Jones is back on tour with a new show, Stories From An Invisible Town, starting at Weston-super-Mare, with dates in Salisbury, Bristol, Plymouth and Bath. On Tuesday 23rd September Shôn Dale-Jones is first and foremost a storyteller. He’s honest, inventive, and deeply human … curious, restless, wide-eyed, offbeat and resonant. His work…

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Brewham to Watchet – two weeks of art in Somerset

SOMERSET Art Weeks returns from 13th to 28th September with an enthralling range of art works by painters, printmakers, sculptors, potters, print-makers and multi-disciplinary creators. From the artists studios at Watchet’s East Quay to a music and sound-scape installation in the atmospheric grounds of Shave Farm, Brewham, there is a dazzling display of the talent…

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Jane Eyre – the untold story

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…

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Laugh with the leopard

IT’s hardly your average response: “The consultant had told me he was confident I had throat cancer that had spread into the lymph glands. Joyfully, I held his hand, and looked up to the heavens like a South American footballer after scoring a goal. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.” But…

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Uncovering the dark secrets of a house in Santiago

PHILIPPE Sands is probably this country’s most famous and respect human rights lawyer. He comes to the Marine Theatre at Lyme Regis, in conjunction with the East Devon-based Shute Festival, on Thursday 25th September to talk about his latest book, 38 Londres Street, in which he uncovers some of the darkest secrets of Chile’s history,…

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Visions of Hildegard

THE words and music of the inspirational medieval Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, a visionary musician, polymath and nun in Germany in the 12th century, echo down a thousand years. Performance group The Telling come to St Mary’s Church, Dorchester, on Tuesday 30th September, at 7.30pm, to perform Vision, celebrating the life, testimony and music of…

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Portrait of an Exmoor legend

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…

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Haywire, Barn Theatre Cirencester

WE live in a time of advertising slogans and clichés, like “bucket list” and “best self” and “soundtrack of our lives”, and it can be infuriating. But the last of those really can’t be better applied than the opening bars of Henry Wood’s Barwick Green – more familiarly known as The Archers theme. It is…

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Four decades of folk – Christine Collister

LEGENDARY folk singer Christine Collister, one of the great stars of the folk music scene for 40 years, has a new show featuring a collection of songs called Children of the Sea Over her four decades in folk music, Christine has released 24 albums, a DVD celebrating 20 years in the business and an acclaimed…

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Moviola in September

TWO remarkable teachers are at the heart of the most in-demand films for September, as Moviola begins its autumn season of taking the best contemporary and classic cinema to village halls and community centres across the region. Leading the field are Mr Burton, the acclaimed portrait of the teacher who supported and inspired the great…

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Cesare, Pleasure Dome and Somerset Opera, Strode Theatre Street and touring

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…

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If the shoe fits …

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…

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Yeovil town council launches Octagon funding consultation

YEOVIL Town Council has launched a public consultation on funding support for the development and reopening of the currently closed Octagon. The town council wants residents to give their views on whether it should contribute £3,964,500 (including Stamp Duty) towards the future of one of Yeovil’s most significant cultural venues that helps to support the…

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Ralph Fiennes and Francesca Annis in world premiere at Bath

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…

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James May’s grand tour of discovery

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…

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Live music for everyone

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….

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Endgame, Ustinov Studio, Bath

SINCE its first performances in 1957, in French and later in English, Samuel Beckett’s Endgame has been subjected to endless debate, interpretation and controversy, by academics, students, theatre-goers and critics. Regarded by many as the greatest work by the Irish Nobel literature laureate, the play was written while the writer lived in France, where the…

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Living Spit – the hits and myths

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…

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The art of early musick at Salisbury

LOVERS of early and baroque music are in for an absolute treat with the first Salisbury Musick early music festival, from 3rd to 5th October, at some beautiful and unusual venues, ranging from Fovant Chapel to Salisbury’s magnificent St Thomas’s Church. The new festival, which brings together many talented local musicians and some visiting professionals,…

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Celebrating the natural world at Shute Festival

THE dramatic Jurassic Coast provides a unique backdrop for the annual Shute Festival, based in West Dorset and East Devon. Throughout its ten years, it has focused on celebrating the natural world, the environment and performing and literary arts. This year’s festival is based at the Marine Theatre and the Peek Chapel, in Lyme Regis…

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Colourful Consequences

DORSET’s famous Cerne Giant had a colourful companion for a few hours when Consequences, a huge temporary artwork was installed next to the enigmatic carving in the chalk downs above Cerne Abbas. Consequences was created by artist Becca Gill’s Radical Ritual company with the input of local community groups as part of Nature Calling, an…

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Tired All the Time

WHEN actors Poppy Hardwicke and Lauren Mooney set out to tell a story about chronic fatigue, a condition they both live with, they called their performance Tired All The Time – it’s hard to think of a more appropriate name for the work they produced during a three-day R&D residency at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre….

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Take a step into the magical world of stories

THERE are often depressing reports of the declining numbers of children and young people who are reading books – but the popularity of the Bath Children’s Literature Festival (this year from 26th September to 5th October) does give ground for hope. There will be fierce competition for tickets to the amazing line-up of children’s authors…

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