SHAKESPEARE’S Macbeth is having a moment this year, with several productions making their way onto the stage and directors competing with each other to discover contemporary relevance in this story of war, murder, greed, power and mental torment. While David Tennant gives his Scottish king in London and Ralph Fiennes tours unusual venues around the…

ALTHOUGH L Frank Baum wrote 14 stories about the Wonderful World of Oz, the one best remembered is that used for the classic 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland. There is no doubting who are the goodies and who the baddies in this version, with Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the…

IF you think of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and ponder their connection with the often dark novels of Charles Dickens, you might say: “Nothing there. What’s your point?” But Opera Della Luna’s founder-director Jeff Clarke looked a bit deeper, considered the things they have in common – particularly Gilbert’s concern with social…

ONE of the things that has happened in theatre in recent years is that the majority of the audience whoops and cheers within a second of the final word of a play being spoken. I was heartened and relieved to find that the (largely young) audience at Yeovil’s Swan Theatre was totally silent and still…

HENRY VIII and his six wives exert a lasting fascination – there are even current “figures” who seem to use him as a role model, and increasingly the viewpoint of the wives is gaining traction, notably in the smash hit musical SIX, which started life on the Edinburgh Fringe. Taunton-born Devon resident Stephanie Easton made…

LOOKING back at the list of plays that this company has tackled during its often turbulent, never dull existence – everything from distinctly personalised views of Shakespeare to completely unscripted plays evolved from workshops – you will not find, until now, a Jacobean comedy or tragedy. What then would they do when presented with an…

‘I’M old fashioned. I love the moonlight. I love the old fashioned things’, so go the Johnny Mercer lyrics to Jerome Kern’s haunting melody, and the song could well serve as an introduction to Tom Littler’s lovingly directed production of W Somerset Maugham’s wonderfully constructed The Circle. Written just over 100 years ago, it caused…

THE first thought that comes to mind when you see the title The Drifters Girl, is “what girl?” The Drifters, formed originally in the 1950s, were, and presumably still are, an all male American R&B soul vocal group – so who is the girl. She was the formidable Faye Treadwell, who with her husband George,…

BACK in 2011, when pronouns were nothing more than another boring bit of grammar you were supposed to learn at school, a 16-year-old boy in a former mining village in County Durham decided to go to his school prom in a frock, and Googled his way to contacting a documentary film company which would record…

AFTER many decades of bringing Eastern European opera and ballet companies to tour the UK, Raymond Gubbay and his rival impresario Ellen Kent can vouch for the fact that it is an enormous financial and artistic challenge. Gubbay’s latest promotion, setting the Bulgarian- based Varna International Ballet company out on a 21-venue, 52 performance tour…