LAURA Wade’s first published play, Colder than Here, was first produced 20 years ago. It was championed in the south west by the Sturminster Newton-based Taboo Theatre, with tours from 2006. Laura and her partner Sam West came to see a Taboo show in an open sided, and very cold, tent. Now the versatile Swan…
A PLAY that began life at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe, where it won awards and critical acclaim, comes to Bath Theatre Royal’s Ustinov Studio from Thursday 20th to Saturday 22nd March. Described as “folk horror”, Birdwatching is a drama about the female experience. Black Bright Theatre Company present Madeleine Farnhill’s play which places female, queer…
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 Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop American history musical Hamilton (pictured below) , from 18th March to…
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…
SLEEPING Beauty, the 2024 Wiltshire Creative pantomime at Salisbury Playhouse, has received three nominations for the Pantomime Awards 2025. The critically-acclaimed show (which had a five-star review in The Stage) has been nominated for Best Pantomime (500-900 seat venues) at the annual awards hosted by The UK Pantomime Association, with Katie Lias also receiving nods…
MICHAEL Maloney takes on one of the great roles in the whole of crime fiction as he plays Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot in a stage adaptation of one of her most popular mysteries, Murder On the Orient Express, coming to Bath Theatre Royal from Tuesday 11th to Saturday 15th March. It’s winter 1934 and an…
WATCHING Galina Ulanova dance the dying swan when in the 1960s the Bolshoi Ballet made a surprise visit to the Bristol Hippodrome and presented a programme of individual party pieces, was one of those magical never-to-be-forgotten theatrical moments. All future ballerinas have had to do battle with that memory when they come to the poignant…
PIANIST Stephen Beville comes to Shute in East Devon for a recital at St Michael’s Church, on Friday 14th March, at 7.30pm, part of the continuing Shute Festival Acclaimed in 2010 by the Frankfurter Neue Press as “one of the most talented young musicians to emerge from the UK,” Stephen Beville is a pianist and…
ONE of the less feeble excuses I have made to friends and family who have suggested that I write my reminiscences of a war and post-war childhood, is that to do so I would show the faults of a father who fought hard all his life to take care of my mother and I, and give…
THERE will be a warm welcome for Scottish pianist Alasdair Beatson when he returns to Dorset and Somerset for the March series of Concerts in the West, starting as always with the coffee concert at Bridport Arts Centre, on Friday 14th at 11.30am. The tour continues that evening at Ilminster Arts Centre at 7.30, and…