The Arts Section

Banff Mountain Film Festival 2026

THE 2026 programmes of Banff Mountain Film Festival screenings are touring the UK, and  local dates continue throughout the year. The short films range from extreme climbing and kayaking to mountain biking and other dazzling adventures in wild places. With extreme climbing, kayaking, mountain biking and the one of the world’s most gruelling races, the…

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Film explores the real Bridgwater

A NEW short documentary, Brick by Brick, is having its first screenings at Bridgwater’s Scott Cinema. Created with the people who live and work in the town, the film takes stereotypes of Bridgwater and challenges the audience to look more deeply. It tells the story of two young, aspiring TikTok influencers who attempt to kick-start…

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Rendez-vous au Monocle

RENDEZ-VOUS Dance company comes to Yeovil’s Westlands centre on Tuesday 3rd February with The Monocle, a fast-paced, contemporary dance and music production dedicated to the legendary Parisian club, Le Monocle, one of the best kept secrets in the glamorous underworld of Paris in the 1930s. Created by the UK-based, French choreographer Mathieu Geffré, the dance…

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The Rivals, Bath Theatre Royal

THE 250th anniversary production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s immortal comedy The Rivals, sub-titled A Trip to Bath, comes “home” to the Theatre Royal as part of its 2026 tour. The 23-year-old Sheridan was catapulted to success by the play, which held a mirror up to the preposterous antics of his day. So it is no…

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Alice in Wonderland, Shaftesbury Arts Centre

LEWIS Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is one of the greatest works of English literature – beautifully, poetically written, full of vivid and unconventional characters, jam-packed with imaginative touches and extraordinary events, somewhere between a rainbow dream and a fever-nightmare, and memorably illustrated, so that we all know what the White Rabbit or the Cheshire Cat…

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The pineapple of perfection

RICHARD Brinsley Sheridan’s play The Rivals gave the world one of the greatest comic characters of all time – the marvellous Mrs Maloprop, whose mangled phrases have ensured her name has even entered the English language. At Bath Theatre Royal, from 27th to 31st January, the beautifully spoken Patricia Hodge takes on this hilarious harridan,…

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Maggie O’Farrell coming to Bath LitFest

BATH Literature Festival 2026 has announced that Maggie O’Farrell, the bestselling author of Hamnet, is coming to Bath to celebrate the release of her new novel, Land. The award-winning Irish author of novels including Hamnet, The Marriage Portrait, After You’d Gone, The Hand That First Held Mine and her memoir I Am, I Am, I…

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2:22 A Ghost Story, Theatre Royal, Bath

THERE are dozens of suggestions as to where the saying ‘Once seen never forgotten’ comes from, but which ever one you subscribe to, the truth of the saying throws up a great problem for director Matthew Dunster as he brings Danny Robins’ thriller out on a tour to areas where it has already been seen….

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Doyle vs Holmes

WE all know the identity of Sherlock Holmes’s arch-nemesis, don’t we – but what if the real “killer” was the great detective’s creator? Find out more when Sherlock Holmes: The Death and Life comes to the Ustinov Studio at Bath Theatre Royal on Friday 30th and Saturday 31st January. The premise of this witty one-man…

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Tales from a taxi rank

THE creative ferment of Frome, Somerset’s most artistically active town, has produced a new play which draws on the writer-performer’s own experience as a taxi driver. Rank, by Dan Gaisford, is coming to Bath Theatre Royal’s Ustinov Studio on 2nd and 3rd February and the Bay Theatre at Weymouth College on 5th February. The play…

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