UNLIKE many famous drawing-room socialists of the 1930s and 40s who, even after visiting Russia, turned a blind eye to Joseph Stalin’s excesses and brutality, quite happy to sacrifice the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen in order to maintain his position of absolute power, George Orwell was quite willing to point an accusing…
THE magical parallel universe created by Shakespeare for his ever-popular A Midsummer Night’s Dream gives the play a timeless quality, and a chance for directors, designers and actors to explore their imaginations. The Arts University Bournemouth team, under the leadership of visiting director Aileen Gonsalves, certainly did that, and the result is a marvellously playful,…
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…