NINE years ago, when Forest Forge dropped its eagerly awaited annual Christmas tour, long-time FF member Dom Phillips determined to fill the gap and created the Bumblefly company of Travelling Players. Now the circle has been reconstituted, and the two companies, along with Mischievous Theatre, came together for a tour of A Humbug Christmas Carol, which…
WHEN Shakespeare wrote “The most excellent and lamentable tragedy of Romeo and Juliet”, he created the two most loved and recognisable pair of lovers the world has ever known. Originally Romeo was described as being 16 years old and Juliet 13, but while Romeo appears to have matured in age over the years, Juliet remains…
LIKE so many theatres across the country, Strode Theatre in Street is facing difficult times. Situated in the first county in the UK to “proudly” proclaim it had stopped all arts funding, the theatre has to maintain and shout about its position as an educational hub and a place where the community in a wide…
THE only Christmassy thing about Jeeves Takes Charge, the marvellously entertaining show at Bath Theatre Royal’s Ustinov Studio until 4th January, is the nickname of the writer … Plum. A selection of the beloved PG Wodehouse stories of Bertie Wooster and his ever-dependable butler, Jeeves, have been adapted by James Duke, Edward Duke and the…
THE story of a beautiful woman cursed by a jealous one, and forced to sleep for a century, is as old as time. The first recorded mention was back in the 1330s, revived by French writer Charles Perrault in 1697 and taken by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. Whatever its history, the tale is a…
YEOVIL has done it again. Bravely, full of determination and belief, relying on the extraordinary talents of local and visiting performers and support from audiences, the Octagon/Westlands team has mounted a show that is nothing short of a triumph. Jack and the Beanstalk opened on Friday 13th December, flying in the face of superstition. With…
PANTOMIME is all about familiarity – familiar stories, familiar routines, familiar songs, familiar faces … and Bath Theatre Royal has it in spades, plus the most beautiful theatre in the country. For many years, the theatre had one of panto’s great double acts – the much-missed Dame and writer, Chris Harris and his knockabout sidekick,…
THE story of Robin Hood, outlawed in Sherwood Forest and famous for robbing the rich to give to the poor, is the most obvious of all the traditional stories to politicise – it’s all there in the massive body of stories that first emerged in the poem Piers Plowman, written in around 1370. You might…
WHEN you’ve got a perfect cast performing a highly-acclaimed version of a couple of episodes of a favourite TV comedy, why not reprise the experience for some other episodes of the show. That was the welcome thinking behind Paul Townsend’s Christmas production at Strode Theatre in Street, getting the faithful audience into the festive spirit…
WHY is it that fairy tales are always described as timeless? It is just because they are just as relevant to every new generation of children, as Chippenham-born writer and actor Florence Espeut-Nickless discovered when she was preparing the Bristol Old Vic Weston Studio Christmas show, Little Red and Other Winter Tales. Florence, the “writer…