Screen Time By Nic Jeune

Festival Treats

Beaminster Festival

from Verdi to Celtic Folk

TICKETS are selling fast for the whole range of events at the 2022 Beaminster Festival, 26 June – 3 July. The Festival’s 25th anniversary will particularly be celebrated at an entertaining evening of Opera Gala highlights from Verdi’s Rigoletto, Mozart’s Cosi fan tutti and Magic Flute and including the famous tenor solo Nessun dorma, sung by the brilliant Merry Opera Company. It’s the excuse for prosecco and dressing to impress.

There is Art at the Museum and at Yarn Barton, and poetry and comedy as fringe events so come and join us in this small but vibrant town of Beaminster—you are sure of a warm welcome.

See full list of events on Page 43. Tickets and more information www. beaminsterfestival.com

Shute Festival

HELD in the hamlet of Shute, in the midst of East Devon’s AONB, Shute Festival was established in 2016 to bring inspirational and stimulating speakers—including botanists, biographers, explorers, documentary makers, gardeners, historians, poets, novelists and travel writers—to a stunning corner of the West Country.

In the intimate, beautifully lit venue of St Michael’s Church, Shute, audiences have, over the years, been treated to an extraordinary selection of speakers and this year is no exception. This year’s event features landscape and art walks, books, dance, drama, Flamenco, film and poetry. For a full lust of events and tickets visit www.shutefest.org.uk. See page 39. Family and Medicine Head.

The idea behind The Blues Band was simple—five musicians steeped in the blues would get together in a pub (The Bridge House in London) one night in April 1979 and enjoy themselves. Tom McGuinness recalls: “It took us by surprise. You couldn’t park a car within three quarters of a mile from the pub. We didn’t realise until we got there that they were all there for us. The place was packed.”

There was a buzz around the band and venues began throwing gigs at them. They recorded a live LP, The Bootleg Album, which was soon selling 5,000 copies per week, and tracks were even being played by Simon Bates on Radio One. Record deals followed. They played everywhere—America, Australia, Europe, Canada, Scandinavia. They toured with the Allman Brothers Band and Dire Straits.

Although this is farewell to The Blues Band, there will still be chances to hear them individually and with other bands—including Dave Kelly and Paul Jones as an entertaining and erudite blues duo, and bassist and song-writer Gary Fletcher with his own band.

But this is the last chance locally to experience a quintet with authentic roots who have kept the flame of a great tradition burning for more than 40 years.

A journey of love and survival

DORCHESTER OPERA is often cruel to women—but they also often get the best songs, as Opera Anywhere and Sorelle will show when they bring Opera’s Heroines to the Corn Exchange at Dorchester on Saturday 25th June at 8pm.

The evening is a journey through some of opera’s most compelling music and drama, exploring the fate of women in opera, with the second half featuring a fully-staged performance of the one-act Puccini opera, Suor Angelica, performed in English.

The first half tells the stories of feisty, wronged women determined to win back their love or seek their revenge at whatever cost. The traditional image of the tragic, scorned heroine is pushed aside to make way for the women forging their own routes to happiness no matter who gets in their way.

The production of Suor Angelica is set in the Republic of Ireland in the 1950s, in a rural convent set deep into a superstitious and isolated community. The interpretation reflects the very real problems facing women in Ireland at the time.

It is not their religion that drives the other characters to ostracise and persecute Angelica—it is their disgust at her social fall from grace and their refusal to face their own hypocrisy. But despite the social and political background, at its core the opera is a story of faith and of the love between mother and child.

Happy days and voodoo nights

HONITON HONITON’s Beehive Centre celebrates the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with two special events over the anniversary weekend, followed by the usual eclectic programme of live music and film.

Happy Days, on Thursday 2nd June at 2.30pm is a “street party on stage” with a sing-a-long and lots of laughs.

And on Friday 3rd at 4pm, there is a screening of Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts, directed by the late great Roger Michell (whose famous films include Notting Hill and the brilliant recent Jim Broadbent/Helen Mirren true story, The Duke). This new film is a nostalgic, uplifting and fresh modern chronicle of the extraordinary 70-year reign of Queen Elizabeth.

The month’s other films include the new Downton (Downton Abbey: A New Era), with two screenings on Friday 10th, the 1953 musical comedy The Band Wagon (Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse), on Thursday 27th at 2pm, and Top Gun: Maverick on Friday 24th.

Live music kicks off on Saturday 11th with Voodoo Room: A Night of Hendrix, Clapton and Cream, a noisy homage to these rock legends, followed by an acoustic night on Wednesday 15th, and the award-winning blues band The Producers on Thursday 16th.

Do you know the way to ... join Tony Christie of Is This The Way To Amarillo fame, as he makes a Honiton stopover en route to Glastonbury Festival on Tuesday 21st.