WITH the news full of details of a 21-year-old American serviceman who decided to leak confidential documents including vital information about the conflict in Ukraine, there could hardly be a better time to see Katherine Moar’s debut play, Farm Hall, at Bath Theatre Royal. It is based on the true story of ten German scientists…
NEXT year, Milborne Port Opera will celebrate its 35th anniversary, and during those years the company evolved from a scratch group of villagers putting on a show to welcome the new village hall to a fine vocal acting group putting on excellent productions of (mainly) Gilbert and Sullivan. But, in common with so many other…
BRISTOL Hippodrome has a pantomime in residence this week, oh yes, it has. A pantomime in April, surely it must be an April fool joke, you say. To which the reply is, this is no joke – it’s a full-blown panto, winner of four prizes at this year’s Pantomime Awards. Does the production live up…
THE people of Dorchester have been working together to create community plays since 1985 and now, after a three-year COVID delay, the seventh, Spinning the Moon, has come to the stage. The idea of plays performed by and for communities was devised in the late 1970s by Ann Jellicoe for her home town of Lyme…
THE generation gap was well and truly on view among the audience watching this world premiere of Birmingham Stage Company’s latest stage adaptation of a David Walliams novel. For the moment, Walliams seems to have usurped Roald Dahl’s position as the go-to author when it comes to bringing popular childrens books to the stage. After…
THIS show, which pays tribute to 1950s singer/songwriter Charles Hardin “Buddy” Holley, has been wowing his fans for almost a dozen more years than he actually lived. Buddy was only 22 years old when, along with two other top rock‘n’roll stars(Ritchie Valens and J P Richardson, aka The Big Bopper,) he was killed when the…
NOEL Coward’s classic Brief Encounter started life as a short play entitled Still Life and became an iconic film, starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, which was quickly recognised as an enduring, three-hanky weepy. Emma Rice reworked it for Cornish theatre innovators Kneehigh and it opened in 2008 in a London cinema, a nod to…
ANNA Leonowens’ memoirs, on which Margaret Landon based her 1944 best-selling novel Anna and the King of Siam, were rather selective when it came to accuracy in telling the facts about her life, to say the least. Landon’s romantic view of Leonowens’ stay at the Siamese court as a teacher to King Munkut’s many children…
LAURA Wade’s play Home, I’m Darling hit the London stage with a 50s flurry and a 22- carat central performance by Katherine Parkinson. Now it has been made available for amateur performance and Frome Drama is the first company to take it on, after its sell-out London run and two national tours, including a visit…
IT’s easy to imagine that the cult of celebrity is a phenomenon of the 21st century, but paparazzi have been chasing stars and venue owners have been encouraging big names – notorious or famous – for at least a century. Cole Porter’s glorious, frothy musical, Anything Goes, set on a transatlantic liner in the great…