THE New Hardy Players, formed to celebrate the work of Dorset’s greatest writer, celebrate their 20th anniversary this year, touring A Few Crusted Characters from 6th to 15th June. The new play has been created from a series of short stories, and willl be performed at beautiful open air venues including Abbotsbury Swannery and Maumbury…
MICHAEL Morpurgo was more than a little sceptical when in 2007 the National Theatre decided to produce a stage version of his 1982 anti-war novel War Horse. Not surprisingly in that the story followed the adventures of a thoroughbred horse from foal to becoming one of the 62,000 (out of one million) horses taken over…
ACTOR Anton Lesser could hardly have been a more appropriate choice to read the words of Thomas Hardy, a man with whom he shares qualifications as an architect, and a subsequent and far more successful and famous career. And on an unforecastly beautiful evening, just west of the world famous Stonehenge, Mr Lesser joined actress…
PURBECK-based writer Georgie Codd will host her first live night out in Dorset on Friday 13th June. In aid of Dorset Mind, it is based around her second book, Never Had a Dad: Adventures in Fatherlessness, which was published in 2024. The book attracted millions of listeners when it was previewed on the hit US…
THE walled garden at Hatch House near Tisbury is a beautiful place at any time of the year, but it is at its most magical in July when the Covent Garden Dance Company brings its mini-festival, Ballet Under the Stars, nicknamed the “Glyndebourne of dance”, this year from 25th to 27th July. Founder-director Matt Brady…
YOU don’t often hear the phrase “protest singer” these days, but the tradition – which stretches back for many years in unions and traditional working communities, and was reinvented by the folk singers of the 1960s – lives on in Reg Meuross, the Crewkerne-based singer-songwriter whose work has always championed the issues of the day,…
FLORA Wilson Brown’s play The Beautiful Future is Coming was first seen at the Jermyn Street Theatre in 2024, and now comes to Bristol Old Vic in a new production by Nancy Medina, the theatre’s artistic director. In the programme Nancy says “ We’re thrilled to share this beautiful human story in our city, which…
BIRDSONG has been an inspiration to composers and musicians for centuries, from the trills of Vivaldi’s Goldfinch Concerto to Beyonce’s cover of the Beatles’ Blackbird. Now, the Lark Music-Making Competition, launched this week in association with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, encourages today’s amateur instrumentalists to take flight with their own interpretations. Open to anyone over…
SOME people these days state their intention to work until they can retire at 45 and enjoy their houses, cars, children, pastimes and leisure while they are still comparatively young. And comparing them to Peggy Seeger, that’s sort of half-grown. The American-born singer-songwriter, half-sister of folk singer Pete Seeger, is still perhaps best known as…
ONE of the best-loved plays of the past 50 years, Educating Rita, comes to Cirencester’s tiny but adventurous Barn Theatre from Friday 16th May to Saturday 28th June. Willy Russell’s two-hander, originally staged in 1980 with Julie Walters in the title role, and three years later filmed with Walters again and Michael Caine as the…
WHEN we were young, salt came in an instantly recognisable tin, with a cute little pouring “beak” and a drawing of a child chasing a chicken and pouring salt on it. Nowadays, a tin like the one illustrated here is a collector’s item! Salt has been an essential in the human diet since the earliest…
GARETH Machin, artistic director of Wiltshire Creative – Salisbury Playhouse, Salisbury Arts Centre and Salisbury International Arts Festival – urged audiences to let their imaginations take flight when he launched the 2025 festival programme, running from Saturday 24th May to Sunday 8th June. He said: “A festival is an opportunity to let imaginations soar and this…
…. stow the chairs – and it’s off to the show THOSE glorious few days of warm sun before Easter were the perfect precursor to the open air theatre season, which will this year get under way in May and bring comedies, tragedies, classics and new stories to audiences across the country until mid-September. While…
THE big spring exhibition at the Somerset Rural Life Museum at Glastonbury, on until 8th June, is Strength and Resilience: Somerset Women in the Second World War, marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, by focusing on the lives of four women who played their part during the conflict and…
THIRTY years ago, two writers, Simon Corbie and Nobby Dimon, adapted John Buchan’s famous story of spies, derring-do and pre-war tension in London and the Highlands, into a play. It had been a successful Alfred Hitchcock film, updated from 1915 to 1935. Ten years later, Patrick Barlow took the play, shook it up and gave…
A NEW play that examines the unique relationship between the late Queen Elizabeth II and her dresser, Daisy Goodwin’s By Royal Appointment, has its world premiere at Bath Theatre Royal, from Thursday 5th to Saturday 14th June, before a UK tour. The play stars Anne Reid as the Queen and Caroline Quentin as The Dresser,…
IF you are among the many people who have been waiting for the latest episode in the Bridget Jones saga to reach your village hall, good news! This is the month when the hapless heroine, once again played by Renee Zellweger, tops the Moviola list, with screenings at Hawkchurch, Membury (Devon), Bourton, South Petherton (David…
A PROJECT to find new plays for small professional companies to tour rural areas has been launched in the South West by Artsreach, Dorset’s rural touring arts charity. The aim is to discover a new piece of touring theatre from a South West based company or artist as part of a national arts scheme called…
SINGERS from several Dorset choirs have been working with Anglo-Chilean band Quimantú on a project that ends on 15th, 2oth and 22nd June with concerts at Sturminster Newton and at London’s “Actors Church”. The collaboration, organised by rural touring charity, Artsreach, has brought Misa de los Mineros (The Miners’ Mass) to audiences across the county….
DORSET Opera Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary at Bryanston School’s Coade Hall this year, following its move to Blandford from its original home at Sherborne School. This year’s festival will run from 22nd to 26th July, and will include two formal dinners in Bryanston House. The opera programme is thrilling, with Verdi’s cruel but musically…
The three largest theatres in the south-west region, Southampton Mayflower (seating 2,300) Bristol Hippodrome (1,951), and Plymouth Theatre Royal (1,320), are the places to see the big touring musicals, and their 2025 schedule includes major national tours. The Mayflower will stage Cameron Mackintosh and Disney’s new production of Mary Poppins production from 27th August to…