Reviews

Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, Salisbury Playhouse

THERE are lots of memorable characters in PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories, so it’s quite some feat for three actors to bring a dozen of them to the stage in a couple of hours, but that’s what Luke Barton, Alistair Cope and Patrick Warner do in the Goodale brothers’ delightful play-within-a-play-after-Wodehouse, at Salisbury Playhouse…

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Farewell Mister Haffmann, Bath Ustinov Studio

FRENCH actor Jean-Philippe Daguerre’s first play Adieu Monsieur Haffmann opened in 2016 and quickly took the theatrical world by storm, winning awards and filling theatres, and was also adapted for the big screen. Now the first English language version makes its UK debut, opening at Bath Theatre Royal’s Ustinov Studio where it plays until 23rd…

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Orpheus and Eurydice, Bristol Old Vic

TEN years from conception to debut onstage, involving 140 players from all over the Bristol area, this is true community theatre. Starting with the god Orpheus being discovered by his foster parents in Leigh Woods at the same time as Eurydice is being born in Southmead Hospital, we are taken on a journey in modern…

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Blood Brothers, Bristol Hippodrome

FOR a play that was written to be presented as a school production and met with only moderate success when, (with a full music score added) it was first produced professionally, Blood Brothers was a very unlikely candidate for an Olivier Award for best new musical, become one of the West End’s longest running musicals,…

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Shrek, Bristol Hippodrome

AUDIENCE tastes have changed greatly since the start of this century – the days when a successful US show, like How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, failed miserably in this country because they were too American have long gone. As a result, although the mainly British cast did not always capture the essential…

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Stars shine on Hatch (despite the rain)

THE four-day celebration of ballet and dance at Hatch House near Tisbury ended with one of the coldest, wettest days of an exceptionally cold and wet July. But it takes a lot more than a bit of bad weather to deter fans of the “Glyndebourne of dance” – and this year’s audience was rewarded with…

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Harmonies and colour from Ninebarrow

IN the pantheon of 21st century British folk music there is a vast range of styles, voices and instrumentation from the gravelly tones and often angry lyrics of Dick Gaughan to the soaring harmonies and sweet melodies of Dorset duo Ninebarrow. There is a world of difference – emotion, politics, instrumentation and attitude – between…

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All Hands! The Nornen Project at Burnham-on-Sea

WHEN the tide goes out at Berrow Beach on the North Somerset coast (and remember that the tidal range of the Severn Estuary is the second larges in the world), you can see the timbers of a boat emerging from the sand. She is the SV Nornen, and she went down on 3rd March 1897 in…

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42nd Street at Bristol Hippodrome

ONE of the most famously memorable phrases uttered on the silver screen since in 1927 Al Jolson declared ‘You ain’t heard nothing yet’ in The Jazz Singer, the film which heralded the beginning of the Talkies, came six years later in the film 42nd Street, from which this show is taken. The whole future of…

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Le Roi de Lahore, Dorset Opera Festival, Bryanston

MASSENET’S exotic and dramatic opera Le Roi de Lahore is rarely performed now, but the huge success of its opening at the Paris Opera in 1877 cemented the composer’s position as one of the most popular in Europe, and the work became a regular feature of operatic seasons. When Rod Kennedy decided to stage it…

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