LEAVE any thoughts of the classic 1935 MGM or 1948 Alexander Korda romantic films, starring Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh, at the door – Lesley Hart’s new interpretation of Leo Tolstoy’s 800-plus page novel is far more realistically gritty than either of those. The writer and director Polina Kalinina keeps the story visually fixed in…
POLLY Lamb burst onto the Frome theatre scene during the Covid outbreak, creating entertaining monologues about women’s lives during the isolated times, and then combining them into a show called Lockdown Blues, which sold out at the 2022 Frome Festival and went on to thrill audiences at Bath Theatre Royal’s pop-up festival in late February….
THE prodigiously talented trio of writer John Finnemore, actor Rachel Fletcher and director Lesley Bates are the ingredients for a theatrical recipe made in heaven, and audiences at Salisbury’s Studio Theatre are enjoying their latest iteration in English for Pony Lovers, in a double bill with an abridged-and-then-abridged-again adaptation of Buchan’s The 39 Steps, by…
BRIAN Clark’s play Whose Life Is It Anyway? was first performed on television in 1972 and adapted for the stage six years later.It was controversial at the time – discussing assisted suicide but winning many awards. Fifty years on, the climate surrounding the debate might have changed, but the questions stay the same, and the…
FRENCH writer Guy de Maupassant, who died in 1893 at the age of 43, wrote more than 300 short stories, and is widely regarded as the master of the genre. Performing Arts students at Arts University Bournemouth have taken over Pavilion Dance for the world premiere of a new musical, which adapts a handful of…
OBSESSIVE fandom is a weird phenomenon, very useful in Mastermind, very competitive and totally absorbing. And it’s something that ABBA seems to have magnetised and intensified, if Ian Hallard’s play The Way Old Friends Do (a song from 1980’s Super Trouper) is anything to go by. Always a favourite with the LGBTQXYZ+ community, long before…
IT might be a nightmare to find yourself walking through the side of a massive wooden galleon into a landscape of plastic detritus and abandoned furniture – or it might be a journey of magic and enchantment. You’ll have to decide when you join the Tempest team in the beautiful Churchill Gardens for the opening…
IF someone told you that the Civic Players were performing Dracula, you would immediately assume that the company would do its usual highly entertaining and excellent job with the hilarious spoof The Dracula Spectacular, and look forward to an evening of laughter. NOT SO! This time the long-established company has taken a leap into the…
THIS is the fourth time that the Disney corporation has taken over Bristol Hippodrome to present probably its most spectacular production, The Lion King. Although the production has been scaled down a little from its first visit – when the theatre had to be closed for nearly two weeks to prepare it for opening night…
THERE are all sorts of reasons to see Shomit Dutta’s play Stumped. You might be a cricket fanatic: you might be expert in the plays of Samuel Beckett and/or Harold Pinter: you might be a fan of Stephen Tompkinson and/or Andrew Lancel. You might just want a very entertaining evening at the theatre. You do…