Reviews

Scaplens Community Players  Bournemouth Little Theatre, Bournemouth John Sivewright 9 May 2025   Scaplens Community Players, a theatre group aimed at bringing the local area’s history to life on the stage, have chosen, as this year’s production, to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day with a splendid evening of song, monologues and a one-act play giving us a taste of what WW2 life would have been like for BCP residents. Judging by the positive comments from the highly appreciative audience this evening at the Bournemouth Little Theatre, Scaplen’s have put together another winning production. The evening began with an informative

SUSU Theatre Group  Annex Theatre, University of Southampton (Highfield Campus), Southampton David Putley 7 May 2025 The premise for this very wordy farce is that 4 upper-class 1980’s New York couples arrive at the home of a friend, the deputy mayor, no less, to celebrate his 10th Wedding Anniversary and find their host bleeding from the head and his wife and household staff missing. The wound is superficial, as is this pretence at a plot  (it is assumed a suicide attempt, which is a federal offence) as each attendee joins in an ever-widening web of lies to cover this. Not

Milton Musical Society  Regent Centre, Christchurch Renée Claude 24 April 2025 “Sisters, the reviews are in!” From the very first downbeat of the band to the final glittering bow, Milton Musical Society’s (MMS) take on the Broadway hit Sister Act is a joyous, toe-tapping celebration of music and sisterhood, directed by Jess Barras and Ellie Tripp. Whoopi Goldberg’s Deloris Van Cartier may be iconic, but newcomer Emma Marshall fills those shoes with charisma, vocal power, and infectious confidence in her MMS debut. The chemistry between her and the soulful voices of Michelle (Beck Ashley) and Tina (Latayan Richardson) in the opening

Lyndhurst Drama & Music Society  Vernon Theatre, Lyndhurst Darren Funnell 24 April 2025 It’s not every day you find yourself watching four middle-aged women stranded on an island with nothing but a compass, a questionable map, cryptic confusion reluctantly surviving without a mobile signal, still recovering from flashbacks of office icebreakers, laced with passive aggression and years of unspoken corporate resentment.  Sheila’s Island, by Tim Firth, currently playing at Vernon Theatre by the Lyndhurst Drama and Musical Society until 26th April 2025 is a wonderfully relatable, often riotous exploration of female friendship, middle-aged frustration, and the perils of trusting Sheila. Somewhere

Ringwood Musical & Dramatic Society [RMDS]  The Barn, Ringwood School, Ringwood Chelsea Sherry 17 April 2025   Taking on a show like Ghost: The Musical is no small feat. It’s an emotional rollercoaster of love, loss, and the supernatural, made famous by the iconic 90s film starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. Ringwood Musical & Dramatic Society certainly approached this ambitious production with heart and creativity. The show tells the story of Sam and Molly, a couple whose world is shattered by Sam’s sudden murder. Stuck between this world and the next, Sam enlists the help of quirky psychic Oda

Ferndown Drama Barrington Centre, Ferndown Becki Dawson 11 April 2025   Ferndown Drama group have been performing since 1962 at The Barrington Theatre in Ferndown and perform two shows a year. The 39 Steps is a novel written by John Buchan and adapted for the stage by Patrick Barlow. It has also been portrayed in Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name and is the story of Richard Hannay, a boring man who meets a woman with a thick accent who says she’s a spy. He takes her home, and she is murdered by a mysterious organisation – The 39