THERE are quite a few similarities between Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw and Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus, as there are about the background of the two authors, born within a year of one another. Both plays contain farcical elements using comedy to expose what the authors see as hypocrisy among the medical profession that…

GENERALLY, when you go to the theatre, you expect (hope) to like or at least empathise with some or all of the characters – but not with Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. All the characters – apart from the bumbling maid Edith – are more or less unpleasant. And Yeovil’s Civic Players production has absolutely nailed…

THERE are some things, like the legendary film Casablanca, that have no right to be successful. Writers brothers J and P Epstein were continually rewriting the script, sometimes delivering changes on the day of shooting. At least three different endings were envisaged, producer Jack L Warner so disliked the final iconic ending with Humphrey Bogart…

DAVID Grieg’s new “play with songs,” Midsummer, made a triumphant premiere at Colchester’s Mercury Theatre, and now plays at the Barn at Cirencester until late June. I can’t urge you enough to go and see it. Musicals are strange things these days. Some of them gain immediate cult status and continue for season after season…

ORLANDO is a figure from distant myths and epics, a source of creative inspiration and fascination – never more so than in Virginia Woolf’s extraordinary novel, Orlando: A Biography, which was the key focus for a Bath Festival concert featuring guitarist Sean Shibe and mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovaska. One of Virginia Woolf’s most popular novels, Orlando…

YANN Martel’s magic-realist philosophical story Life of Pi, winner of the Man Booker prize in 2002, is all about a boy from Pondicherry, named Piscine (which he has abbreviated to Pi), brought up in a zoo, with his family and other animals escaping violent uprisings on a Japanese ship that goes down in a storm…

BATH Festival has always had music at its heart, with performances by many of the world’s leading soloists, ensembles and orchestras, including some of the finest interpreters of early music. This year’s festival, running to 26th May, saw the Bath debut of Stile Antico, a 12-strong a cappella ensemble dedicated to performing the vocal music…

WASSAIL, known as Somerset’s resident theatre company, is back with a bang (or at least a strawberry pavlova) in a new show called Birthday Day, currently touring until the beginning of September. Based on a short story by company founder Nick White, it does what Wassail does best – get into the heart of the…

ITALIAN playwright Carlo Goldoni is best known now for his The Servant of Two Masters, written in 1745 and adapted for a 21st century audience as One Man, Two Guvnors by Richard Bean in 2011 and catapulting James Corden into international success. The Venetian lawyer was a prolific writer, and in 1761 he wrote what…

TERENCE Rattigan was the star playwright of the 40s and 50s, until the new wave kitchen sink writers shot him from the firmament, after which he was considered dated, mannered, posh and irrelevant. Recently, a few directors have rediscovered his works and revelatory productions have been mounted. Lindsay Posner’s current production at Bath’s Ustinov Studio,…