HOT on the heels of the Swan Theatre’s own mystery horror, Civic Players will be performing The Murder Room as their pre-Christmas offering at the Yeovil theatre from 4th to 7th December. Described as a hilarious murder mystery spoof, Jack Sharkey’s The Murder Room was scheduled for production in 2020, when COVID restrictions shut down theatres…
PLAYWRIGHT Stephen Lowe adapted Robert Tressell’s partly-autobiographical novel The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists in 1978 for Joint Stock, and the members of Frome Drama chose it for their autumn show, hot on the heels of a general election that has brought the Labour movement to power after years of Tory rule. Tressell was a painter and decorator,…
THE members of MADS, aka Mere Amateur Dramatic Society, and their audiences, will be paying tribute to the memory to Eric Kincaid when they perform Alice in Blunderland at the Lecture Hall from 28th to 30th November. They have chosen Eric’s own pantomime, written with his friend Chris Wood and first performed in 2007. Eric,…
TRICK photography has been used in-film making almost from the time of the first moving pictures – Georges Méliès’s Trip to the Moon featured a rocket landing in the Man in the Moon’s eye way back in 1902. It had become much more sophisticated by 1937, when Cary Grant and Constance Bennett caused comic havoc…
SOME years ago we visited a remote castle in Scotland, as a possible choice for a big family holiday. Within minutes of entering the ancient stone tower we were chilled and alarmed, wrapped in a an insidious sense of misery that only grew worse as we went through more rooms. Later, we learned that for…
ONE of the most enchanting stage stories for children, Snow Mouse returns to Bath’s Egg theatre this Christmas for the tenth consecutive year, from Friday 29th November to Sunday 5th January. This “delightful” (The Stage) seasonal tale for the very young, performed in the Roper Room, is perfect for children aged six months to four…
ON Friday 22nd November composer Jenny Bliss will be at Wells Cathedral with a programme of baroque and contemporary works for St Cecilia’s Day. Her new compositions, Let there be light and O Cecilia, will be performed by some of the best known players on the baroque music scene, including Joanna Lawrence from the Orchestra of…
PLAYWRIGHT Tabitha Hayward, who is about to start a new job at London’s famous Royal Court, was surprised when she left her Dorset home for Oxford University and the working world to find that the hill forts she regarded as ordinary landscape features were not widespread across the country. Now she has returned “home” to…
FIONA Ross’s production of Romeo and Juliet for the students at Arts University Bournemouth in their Palace Court Theatre pares the action and the story back to its bones, convincingly underlining the timelessness of Shakespeare’s greatest love story. With daily news full of knife fights and teenage deaths, this is another story of gangs and…
THIS new musical production of one of the world’s most popular stories, with seven new numbers by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe happily blending with the Sherman Brothers iconic original score, is big, bold and beautiful. It has lavish sets with costumes to match, by Bob Crowley, that change with the precision of co-director Matthew…