Reviews

It is always a pleasure to attend a performance at the delightful Bournemouth Little Theatre in Jameson Road, Winton,with its quaint ambience, cosy interior and nostalgic appearance, and what better reason to turn out on a cold, wet evening than to watch an excellent production of Talking Heads. Alan Bennett, leading English-language dramatist since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s, wrote Talking Heads, which became a television series and modern-day classic, as have many of his works. In A Bed Among the Lentils, Susan is a vicar’s wife who, suffocated by the expectations forced upon her by her

Formed by John King and Eliot Walker in 2008, Regent Rep is the production company of the Regent Centre, creating an opportunity for the very best talent in the thriving local amateur theatre scene to get involved with a range of productions. It has fulfilled its objectives wholly in this production of the famous Agatha Christie novel. An excellent set, superb lighting effects and timely sounds ensure that the audience is captivated with the plot from the very opening line and although many of us will have read the book and watched both theatre and film adaptations, along with many

Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1956 play was written partly out of his unease at his country’s response to World War 2 and its aftermath, a time when poverty was endemic in much of Europe. The entire community in the fictional town of Guellen (which apparently means ‘excrement’ in Swiss) is in a state of complete despair, so when a former resident, Claire Zachanassian, now very rich, returns with the offer of a great deal of money in return for justice being done with regard to an incident from many years previously, the people face a moral dilemma that will change

His eccentric Aunt Augusta persuades retired bank manager Henry to abandon his dull life and embark upon a series of unexpected and hilarious adventures. Travelling with his aunt to Brighton, Paris, Istanbul and then across the world to South America, Henry encounters his aunt’s shady associates – pot-smoking hippies, war criminals, men from the CIA and art smugglers. Henry finds himself coming alive as he puts his former life behind him. You will realise from the foregoing description that this production is a long way from the three-act, three-set format with which we are all so familiar. It is indeed

Stylish projected sequences onto hanging boards during the overture tell some of the back story of the principals, showing the infant Casilda growing up in Spain and the infant prince growing up in Venice and then the adult Casilda and her parents journeying overseas to Venice. The projections onto these boards throughout the show are something that D’Oyly Carte couldn’t even have dreamed of, but it is one of the many excellent modernisations of this show. Somebody muttered in my ear that you can hire these in, but the programme credits Set and Projection Design to Kevin Wilkins; whoever did

Originating from a 1970 play by Christopher Bond, this portrayal of the ‘Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ first appeared in 1979. With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim alongside leading principals Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury, it was inevitable that the production would win both a Tony and an Olivier Award for Best New Musical. It is an unsettling tale of a Victorian-era barber who returns home to London after fifteen years of exile to take revenge on the corrupt judge who ruined his life. When revenge eludes him, Sweeney swears vengeance on the entire human race, murdering as many