THERE is a dramatic tragedy lurking in the story of a group of about-to-be-made-redundant Rhondda Valley miners reforming their Male Voice Choir, as the once-dominant coal industry begins shrink into insignificance during the 1950s. At its height there were 53 coal mines in the Rhondda. By 1990, only one was left in production. Composer David…
IN amongst his more than 50 novels and dozens of short stories, HG Wells wrote several science fiction works, many at the end of the 19th century, which, with uncanny accuracy, predicted aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television, a form of the world wide web and biological engineering. The Time Machine was Wells’…
RUFUS Norris, director of the National Theatre, has always been keen that his company on London’s South Bank should live up to its name and be a truly NATIONAL theatre, for everyone. Five years ago, Public Acts was set up to pursue this purpose, and the locked-down days of the COVID pandemic gave Norris and…
THE phrase “jumping in the deep end’ comes to mind when looking at Margaret Hobbs, the author of the script for this stage adaption of Barry Reed’s 1980 novel The Verdict. It is said that we all have at least one book or play within us, and, fully believing this, Margaret Hobbs tried hard for…
TO mark the tenth anniversary of Martin Emslie’s oratorio Omega and Alpha, the Wells Cathedral premiere was revived at Yeovil’s Westlands with several members of the original Castle Cary Choir and two of the soloists, mezzo Marta Fontanals-Simmons and high tenor Jonathan Ansell, who rose to fame as a member of classical boy group G4….
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…