Reviews

This Play, written by Liz Lochhead, is the second of three Productions by the 3rd Year Drama Students of the Arts University, at the small and atmospheric Shelley Theatre which is of course a fitting Venue for this trio of Productions about the Shelley Family and their literary and domestic lives and particularly, Marys’ (in)famous monstrous character, Frankenstein.   As The Directors’ Notes informed us, the Play explores Mary’s life around the time in 1816 when she was living in Geneva with the already-married Percy Bysshe Shelley and also with her half-sister Claire and the infamous Lord Byron.   But we see

Helen Edmundson’s play, premiered in 2012, forms part of AUB Productions’ ‘Shelley at the Shelley’ (Thursday, Nov. 8th until Saturday, November 17th), along with a devised piece, ‘Freakenstein’, and Liz Lochhead’s ‘Blood and Ice’, which focuses on the creation of Mary Shelley’s novel, ‘Frankenstein’. On the strength of ‘Mary Shelley’, I have already purchased our tickets for Sunday evening’s performance of the latter. The cast are all third year students on AUB’s BA (Hons) Acting course but this is, apparently, their first public performance. I’m told by one in the know that that engendered some greater-than-usual pre-opening nerves among the

As I read the programme before the house lights went down, I had an uncomfortable feeling that P&P had got it wrong by presenting a show that is basically the rumbustious music of the two World Wars, but interspersed with some fairly harrowing readings and finishing with the solemnity of the Last Post, a silence, the reading of ‘They shall grow not old’ and Reveille. By the end, I still felt that there was a slight misjudgement in tone, but it had dawned on me that by putting their all into such a show, the cast are paying tribute in

Remembrance Sunday and the Armistice Centenary both fall on the same day this year, Sunday 11 November, and a number of local societies are choosing to commemorate the end of the First World War with their Autumn productions. Poulner Players are among the companies remembering and honouring those who have made the ultimate sacrifice with an evening of two short one-act plays set during WW1 (both directed by Peter Ansell). They are being performed in the uniquely laid out venue of Ringwood Meeting House, with the Grade II listed building (a virtually unaltered pre-1800s Meeting House layout, complete with its

Made in 1952, this masterpiece of the classical Hollywood musical genre was voted fifth in the American Film Institute’s top 100 greatest films of all time and it’s not hard to see why it has endeared itself to generations of film and music lovers ever since, with its comedy, its variety of tunes, its range of characters and its opportunity for big chorus numbers. Set in Hollywood in the late 1920s, the film industry is on the brink of upheaval with the arrival of the very first talking picture, ‘The Jazz Singer’. Eager to emulate that film’s success, Monumental Pictures’

It’s a funny little place Swanage. Some villages in Dorset are bigger than Swanage and yet it’s never failed to produce more than its fair share of talent. It’s good to see, through the upcoming generations, the performing arts are in safe hands. Bugsy Malone is a fabulous show; I’ve seen it many times. The parents of tonight’s cast must be very proud. I would be. It’s easy to pick out the stars, and I suppose they are important, but it’s all the ensemble that gets my attention. What a great bunch they were. I tend to look at the