IT’S 34 years since the fledgling Milborne Port Opera took to the village hall stage to perform Trial by Jury, and since then dozens of singing actors, acting singers and dancers have got together around Easter to put on a show. The company’s reputation has grown, the repertoire become more varied, and, from the original…

AFTER singing Climb Every Mountain at a band call in the Circle Bar of Bristol Hippodrome, a friend of mine fixed a steely eye on the conductor and brass section of the orchestra and said, “Listen gentleman, the audience will have paid their money to hear me sing this number, not hear you play it”….

IN many ways the story of Montague Burton, gentlemen’s outfitters, runs parallel with the rise and fall of the steel industry in the UK. Escaping from Russian pogroms, Lithuanian born Meshe David Osinsky arrived in this country in 1900, aged 15 and unable to speak English. Within a year he was earning a living as…

AT 9pm on Wednesday July 20th 2011 BBC three put out a documentary directed and produced by Jenny Popplewell entitled Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, which to put it mildly raised more than a few eyebrows. Narrated by Jill Halfpenny it followed the story of County Durham schoolboy Jamie Campbell, who after coming out as…

A PACKED audience at Bath Theatre Royal welcomed the appearances of their old friends from GlobeLink with cheers and applause as each arrived on the stage – which must have delighted the writers, who were in the theatre for the show. Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, who wrote all six series of the television comedy…

ADAPTING Paula Hawkins’ best selling novel The Girl on the Train for the stage is a challenge both for the actors and for the technical team, as its tension requires not only moving images of railway movement but clear depictions of messages on mobile phones and lots of often startling sound effects. All very well…

IN an average week, we do one or two theatre reviews, one of which is usually a professional show. This week we will have done four, all amateur (plus a concert). Two in Yeovil – A Splinter of Ice at the Swan and YAOS’s Oklahoma! at Westlands – and Girl on the Train in Street….

THE “old boys network” is a constant feature of British life, and no matter how many times we are told the class structure of society is a thing of the past, those old boys still reign supreme in (especially) politics, business and the law. It’s all about supporting the people with the same, often educational,…

IN recent years, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1943 musical Oklahoma has had something of a makeover, with hard-edged productions delighting critics and audiences. Now it’s the turn for Yeovil’s own remarkable musical theatre community, under the direction of Sheila Driver, to present a version that strips away the sentimentality, leaving the lush songs, poignant romance, sexual…

KABUL-born Khaled Hosseini, on whose debut book this play is based, left Afghanistan with his family and arrived in the USA, via Iran and France, unable to speak a word of English. Educated in California, he went on to practise medicine for ten years before producing his first novel, The Kite Runner. A naturalised American…