FORTY years after its premiere in Scarborough, Alan Ayckbourn’s A Chorus of Disapproval, the play set in and around an amateur production of John Gay’s A Beggar’s Opera, returns to Salisbury Playhouse for a four week run. With its cast of 13, it’s a big undertaking and director Gareth Machin is keen to point out…
SALISBURY’s Studio Theatre has a triple bill of comedy coming up on 10th and 11th May, including two festival award-winning one-act plays and an operatic skit. The performances start at 8pm. English for Pony Lovers, from the radio series Double Acts by John Finnemore, was the am-dram company’s entry to the Totton Festival of Drama…
THIS year may be the last major Second World War commemoration, with the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, the beginning of the end of the war in Europe, as huge numbers of Allied troops gathered along the south and west coast of England, preparing to invade France and free Europe from the curse of…
THE musical version of the story of Bonnie and Clyde, with its Frank Wildhorn music, Don Black lyrics and Ivan Mencell book, started life in San Diego in 2009, finally coming to the UK in 2022, where it was rapturously received. Now it’s on tour until October, giving audiences around the country a chance to…
THE May screenings by Moviola around our region include Oscar-nominee The Holdovers and the period English comedy Wicked Little Letters, but two other films this month deserve a special mention – the acclaimed French drama Anatomy of a Fall, and the 2023 musical version of Alice Walker’s 1982 novel, The Colour Purple. Anatomy of a…
THE summer 2024 exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral explores our relationship with the earth at a time of environmental crisis and change. Opening to coincide with World Earth Day (22nd April), the exhibition runs to 6th October and includes works inside the cathedral, in the cloisters and on the lawns. The background to Our Earth, curated…
THE 2024 Bath Festival, running from Friday 17th to Sunday 26th May, will take audiences on an astonishing and exciting journey through some of today’s most exciting writers, challenging thinkers, hilarious comedians and brilliant musicians, with subjects that range from the climate crisis to silent horror classic Nosferatu, from the Sky at Night presenter Dr…
THE iconoclastic Living Spit, led by Stu McLoughlin, now sadly without the late Howard Coggins, tackles one of the greatest stories of all – The Passion, in their latest show, touring this spring, with performances continuing at The Theatre Shop at Clevedon from until 11th May, Plough Arts at Torrington in Devon on 17th May…
A GENEROUS legacy has helped the National Trust to plant 5,000 trees as part of two new hedgerows on the Golden Cap Estate on Dorset’s Jurassic coast near Morcomeblake. Once established, the new hedges will become crucial wildlife corridors, absorb carbon, create shelter and provide a food source for a wide variety of birds, mammals…
THE distinguished conductor Mark Wigglesworth has been announced as the new chief conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. He will take up the role at the start of the orchestra’s 2024-25 season in September, when Kirill Karabits, the BSO’s inspiring chief conductor for the past 15 years, becomes Conductor Laureate and artistic director of the…
HIGH ropes experts have installed cameras on the cliffs near the National Trust’s Dancing Ledge in Purbeck to monitor the last known nesting site for puffins on the mainland of southern England. It is hoped that the cameras will reveal why these iconic birds are on the verge of extinction. In the early 1900s, puffins…
YOU probably know that rice is grown in Europe – mainly in Italy. Carnaroli, arborio and vialone are three varieties of rice which are used for risotto and are readily available in good food shops and supermarkets. You might think that was “European rice” – but in fact European rice is something different, grown in…
TINY Clouds Hill, near Wareham, where TE Lawrence – Lawrence of Arabia – lived in the 1930s, is now open for the 2024 season. A previously undiscovered photograph shows one of the families who previously lived in the remote cottage – and gives an insight into its appearance before Lawrence. One of the National Trust’s…
BATH Theatre Royal has announced a season of plays next summer, in which the actor will star in David Hare’s Grace Pervades, and will direct Harriet Walter and Gloria Obianyo in Shakespeare’s As You Like it. Booking opens for both on Wednesday 27th March (if you are an Associate member) or, for Friends, it’s Friday…
THE programming at Messums West, the gallery and art centre in the ancient tithe barn at Tisbury, gets ever more adventurous, with a collaboration this year with Salisbury International Arts Festival and a two-month sound installation, created by Orlando Gough and Alastair Goolden, which draws its inspiration, in part from the river Nadder. Running from…
BRISTOL Hippodrome is one of four regional theatres chosen to host a tour of Player Kings, director Robert Icke’s adaptation of King Henry IV parts 1 and 2, starring Sir Ian McKellen as Falstaff. The nearly four-hour reworking of the two plays will be at Bristol from 3rd to 6th July, following the end of…
MARLBOROUGH LitFest celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, from 26th to 29th September, and the first event has been announced – the festival’s patron, Sir Simon Russell Beale, will be talking about his memoir, A Piece of Work, on the evening of Sunday 29th September. The book, A Piece of Work, is due to be…
ONE of the most popular and critically successful films ever made about the world of high fashion, The Devil Wears Prada has been adapted into a musical, with a score by Sir Elton John. It makes its debut with a six-week, pre-West End season, this summer from 6th July to 17th August, at Plymouth Theatre…
ARTHUR Conan Doyle’s immortal creation, Sherlock Holmes, tackles another curious case in Sherlock’s Excellent Adventure, a comedy adventure by James Barry, touring this area, with dates starting at Warminster’s Athenaeum Friday on 10th May, and Bath Rondo on Saturday 11th. Follow Sherlock Holmes and his incomparable sidekick Dr John Watson on this riveting, hitherto unpublished…
BROTHERS Ben and Phil Drew fill the light and airy gallery at The Slade Centre in Gillingham with their exciting and vivid fabric and glass designs in an exhibition which runs to 18th May. Gallery owner Anne Hitchcock describes the show as “a conversation between works in fabric by Ben and glass by Phil. What…
CELEBRATE Somerset this year on Somerset Day, Saturday 11th May – and join in the community-based Big Somerset Picnic, with events across the weekend on 11th and Sunday 12th. As well as the opportunity to enjoy great food and drink, the aim of this year’s Big Picnic is to bring people together and improve opportunities…
THE inaugural Mayhem Film Festival, celebrating music in film, takes place at Bridgwater over the weekend of Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th May. The programme of talks, films, workshops and live music is being held at Bridgwater Arts Centre, The Engine Room and Scott Cinemas, while, During the day, outside in the town, attendees and…
FOLK quartet Dallahan’s founding member and frontman Jack Badcock releases his first solo album, Cosmography, early in May, and is heading out on a 16-venue UK tour to introduce his many fans to the new songs. He will be at Bridport’s British Legion Hall on Saturday 18th May, and at Ashburton Arts Centre two days…
SALISBURY Cathedral has a week-long festival in May to mark the centenary of one of the major figures of late 19th and early 20th century English music, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. The festival, from Monday 6th to Sunday 12th May, will include concerts and music by Stanford within the cathedral services. Nowadays, Stanford is largely…
THE brilliant and multi-award-winning Constellations, by Nick Payne, is the spring production at the Barn Theatre, in Cirencester, from Friday 29th March to Saturday 18th May. Described as a high-concept romance, “a Sliding Doors to the power of 100”, Constellations is a drama about time and memory, about death and grief and the power of…