SAMUEL Beckett, Nobel literature laureate and best known as the writer of the iconic Waiting for Godot (among many other plays) is well known for his bleak look at the world and its inhabitants, increasingly minimalised as he grew older. He was born in Ireland and lived most of his life in France, where he…
PENELOPE Christopher, who has directed Athenaeum Limelight Players in their first play since the onset of the pandemic, has been a fan of Jeeves and Wooster for many years, so Perfect Nonsense seemed an ideal choice. The basic requirements – given the constraints of social distancing and the need to give audiences confidence to return…
MATTHEW Bourne’s The Midnight Bell, inspired by the writings of novelist Patrick Hamilton and set in central London in the early 1930s, is a febrile investigation of love and how to find it, as well as a nostalgic plunge into a barely-remembered time. We know, looking at the era from the next century, what was…
ON the face of it, Hairspray is just a lightweight bit of fun – especially a production like this one, that fully captures the feel of the 1960s, with back-combed beehive hair styles and clothes to match. But lurking just below the surface are the prejudices of racism that prevent black dancers even auditioning for…
THE Bath Mozart Fest took us musically through three of the four seasons, Spring, Summer and Autumn, in the course of just 24 hours. Spring came in the form of four members of the BBC New Generation Artists – pianist Elisabeth Brauss, violinist Aleksey Semenenko, violist Elvind Ringstad and cellist Andrei Ionita. In music, as…
IF I was to ask 1,000 people who won the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, I doubt that more than a handful would come up with the answer – Irish duo Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan singing Rock ‘n Roll Kids. If I mentioned the name Michael Flatley, a dancer who led an Irish dance team…
THERE are moments when the magic of theatre is almost tangible, seconds or even minutes when a whole auditorium holds its breath, intense passages when even the stage lighting seems to change subtly and you don’t know whether it’s the lighting engineer’s skill or your brain that is lowering the level. Conor McPherson’s The Weir…
MERE Amateur Dramatic Society has welcomed its faithful audience back to the Lecture Hall with four short plays, one the premiere of a solo show by a well-known local playwright, and another a revived radio play by the mother of a Mere resident. The evening begins with Jean McConnell’s Day Trippers, performed by Rose Heesom…
FACED with the option of facing an audience at 11am on a Monday morning, or 7.30pm, Tuesday evening, I know which one I would choose. Like true professionals, the hour of 11am and the coolness of the Assembly Rooms did not phase Rachel Podger and Christopher Glynn for a moment. With their musical skills and…
ALAN Ayckbourn’s 1980 play Season’s Greetings is perhaps the polar opposite of all those sickly, soft-focus images of the perfect family festivities. Set in the home of Neville and Belinda Bunker, the five scenes start on Christmas Eve and end in the early hours of 27th December, and show how the family and friends slot…