WE think of fashions in clothes or hairstyles changing on a regular basis, but other changes in society slip by us almost unnoticed. At the end of the last century, feminist arguments were almost always presented in such and angry and belligerent way that they were practically guaranteed to offend and upset most of those…
‘WHEN an irresistible force, such as you. Meets an old immovable object like me. You can bet just as sure as you live, Something’s Gotta Give, Something’s Gotta Give’. So go the lyrics of the popular Johnny Mercer song. The problem is that while the words are a romantic bit of fun in the musical…
Mahler’s 4th Symphony Beethoven Overture: Leonora No, 3 Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending Mahler Symphony No. 4 Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Amyn Merchant Alexander Soddy: Conductor Thomas Gould: Violin Natalia Tanasii: Soprano ALEXANDER Soddy led the BSO through a packed, popular and richly varied programme at the Lighthouse last night, combining Beethoven’s most extended and…
AS any top class chef will tell you, high quality ingredients are required if you are to produce a memorable meal. And with the team behind this production – set and costume designer Lez Brotherston, lighting and sound designers Paule Constable, and Paul Groothuis, plus a classic fairytale set to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s haunting music,…
RYAN Craig’s stark new love story, Charlotte and Theodore, has its premiere at Bath’s Ustinov Studio until 18th March, from where it will undoubtedly travel to a well-deserved spot in London. Bitingly modern, it looks at ten years in the lives of two philosophers, caught in the constantly undulating flux of opinion and fashion on established…
FOUR years and a pandemic since the first national tour of Laura Wade’s thought-provoking satirical play Home, I’m Darling last visited Bath, the new cast in the same production arrives in the city, and for those who remember April 2019, it’s the same brilliantly observed set from Anna Fleischle. The story centres on Judy and…
A FAVOURITE remark of one of the BBC’S most experienced producers when giving advice to inexperienced young people following in his footsteps was “always start your programme with something attention grabbing and finish with something memorable. If you have any suspect or weak material hide it in the middle of the show”. Looking at the…
THERE are just a handful of musicals which, like great actors, dominate the stage the moment they appear, standing head and shoulders above the rest of the herd. My Fair Lady, along with Oklahoma and Show Boat, is such a musical. No one-hit-wonder this show, a big success when first produced, but rarely seen afterwards….
WHEN a stage play is rapidly turned into a wildly successful movie, it is very hard for the average audience to rid its memory of the images of the starry leading actors. So it is with Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias, immortalised in 1990 on film by Dolly Parton, Olympia Dukakis, Sally Field, Julia Roberts, Shirley…
ALAN Ayckbourn is as popular as he is prolific, so it’s no great surprise, as a reviewer, to see two of his plays in quick succession. An interesting contrast, though, as the productions (both excellent) are his first big success Relatively Speaking, which was at Bath, and How The Other Half Loves, at Salisbury Playhouse,…