PREVIEW May

Robin Hood to Pandora’s Box ARTSREACH SPRING AND SUMMER

DORSET’s rural touring charity Artsreach has lined up an eclectic, exciting and inspiring programme of theatre, comedy, poetry, dance and music for the late spring and summer.

From Three Inch Fools with Robin Hood and his merry men to Paprika’s wild gypsy music from the Balkans, from Opera in a Box with Mozart’s Don Giovanni to Living Spit on the farm, there is something for everyone, across the county, from Cranborne to Halstock.

Much-loved comedy duo, Clevedon-based Living Spit are back on tour across the region, with their hilarious rural romp, One Man & His Cow, with two Artsreach performances, at the village halls at Cranborne (12th May) and Studland 27th May). Given just months to live, farmer Trevor is faced with the dilemma of which of his three children to bequeath his beloved farmstead to. Each has their own beguiling qualities and Trevor just can’t choose between them, until one fateful night in the cowshed, help arrives from the most unlikely of sources.

Living Spit will also perform One Man And His Cow on 20th May at the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis, and 1st June at Bridport Arts Centre.

Chetnole on 20th May will be one of two venues for the West African multi-instrumentalis, kora maestro and composer Amadou Diagne and French-American guitarist and songwriter Cory Seznec. Also appearing at Blandford on 19th May, the duo draw heavily on the traditional music and rhythms of West Africa.

The INN Crowd series of performances in pubs continues with three shows. The Gaggle of Geese in Buckland Newton welcomes writer, performer and radio producer Rosa Torr (4th June) with Rattus Rattus: The Epic Tail of Man vs Rat, a real-life story about family, growing up, and the times we all find we’ve gone a little bit mad.

Callum Hughes heads to The Royal Oak, Drimpton (11th June) and the bar of Swanage’s Mowlem theatre (12th June) with Thirst, story-telling and song, celebrating sobriety and all things alcoholic.

Playwright and poet Brenda Read Brown will be in the bar at Sturminster Newton Exchange (26th July) with But I Haven’t Finished Yet, a riotous celebration of growing older.

The first open air show of the summer is on 1st July at Halstock village hall field where Brainfools perform Lucky Pigeon, an absurd and colourful show that combines acrobatics and a pinch of satirical spice and puppetry.

Grand opera in miniature come to Lytchett Matravers (9th July) with Opera in a Box’s retelling of one of the greatest operas, Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The story follows the notorious womaniser as he lusts his way towards a dramatic downfall.

July also sees two gigs with the Balkan band Paprika, bringing their fusion of Eastern European, Balkan, gypsy and classical music to the village halls at Portesham on 15th July and Langton Matravers, the following night.

An entertaining series of open air shows in high summer starts at Sandford Orcas on 15th August with Three Inch Fools and their madcap take on the legendary Robin Hood, followed by The Last Baguette at Winterborne Stickland sports ground on 16th August with a comic contemporary take on a famous Greek myth, Pandora’s Box Jar; and Calf 2 Cow round up the summer programme on 22nd August with a new adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s famous poem Jabberwocky in the beautiful gardens of Springhead at Fontmell Magna.

Northern Chords on tour CONCERTS IN THE WEST

A BRILLIANT young trio of musicians, the Northern Chords Ensemble, come to Bridport, Ilminster and Crewkerne for the May series of Concerts in the West, on Friday 5th and Saturday 6th May.

The three international musicians got together at the Northern Chords Festival, which was founded in 2009, to bring world-class musical performance to the North East. The festival itself takes place in May across venues in the region.

Individually, violinist Benjamin Baker, cellist Jonathan Bloxham and pianist Daniel Lebhardt enjoy stellar careers and have won many prestigious awards . They perform regularly as soloists and chamber musicians worldwide, from the Wigmore Hall and the Southbank Centre to the Philharmonie in Berlin and the Kennedy Centre in Washington.

The first concert of the series is the usual coffee concert at Bridport, on Friday 5th May at 11.30am. The evening concerts are at Ilminster Arts Centre on Friday and Crewkerne Dance House on Saturday, both at 7.30pm.

The programme includes Beethoven’s Piano Trio in E flat major, Highland Scenes by Matthew Kaner, and Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No 1 in D minor.

New play from Devon writer

STOCKLAND

DEVON’s Villages in Action rural arts organisation brings a new play by a local writer to two venues this spring— Ashburton Arts Centre on 14th May and Stockland village hall, near Honiton, on 3rd June.

Hattie Collins’ Kindle, described as intimate, turbulent and captivating, and performed by Almanac Theatre Company, takes a hard look at the stark divide between rural and urban communities and how climate change and ever-rising costs are affecting rural areas.

Heather, Holly and their mum Angela, a close-knit family from Devon struggle to run a rural petrol station. When Holly finally returns home from the city, she discovers a shattered version of the village she left behind…

After the show there is a free creative workshop, offering participants the opportunity to be part of creating a short, illustrated film. The workshop will be based around the themes of the play and the group will be joined by a community energy representative to hear a little bit about what they do.

There is more entertainment at Stockland on Sunday 11th June, when recent music graduate, tenor Gregory Steward gives a concert of classical and musical theatre songs, at 6pm at St. Michael and All Angels Church. Profits from the event will go towards re-pointing the church’s leaky bell tower!

Songs from the radical tradition DORCHESTER

ONE of this country’s most popular historians joins forces with a folk band that can sell out the Royal Albert Hall for an evening celebrating the English radical tradition in songs, on Saturday 13th May at Thomas Hardye School Theatre in Dorchester at 8pm..

Show of Hands (Phil Beer and Steve Knightley) join forces with historian Michael Wood and singer Kirsty Merryn for this exciting programme, taking the audience on a chronological journey through 800 years of English radical songs.

Michael Wood, broadcaster, author and inspiring speaker, will provide the historical context and the three musicians will create the musical settings to songs that are the soundtrack to the People’s History.

From the Great Famine and the Peasant’s Revolt in the 14th century, via the English Civil War, the Diggers and Levellers, Peterloo and the Chartists to the Tolpuddle Martyrs, these songs shine a light on the lives of ordinary men and women through times of struggle and hardship as they fought for the rights that are ours today.

This concert, which is also being staged at the Beehive Centre at Honiton, on Wednesday 10th May, and at Sidmouth Folk Festival (4th to 11th August), is a timely reminder of what was hard won—and what we should still value and defend.

Virtuoso string trio DORCHESTER

A MEETING in a small Russian cultural cafe in Glasgow led to the formation of a trio that is now regarded as one of the finest string ensembles, playing music that crosses the boundaries of classical, gypsy jazz and folk.

The Tim Kliphuis, which was founded after the meeting in Café Cossachok in 2006, comes to the Corn Exchange at Dorchester on Friday 19th May at 8pm

The three musicians, Kliphuis on violin, Nigel Clark on guitar and Roy Percy, double bass, combine jaw-dropping virtuosity and mesmerizing improvisations.

They started out with Grappelli jazz on their first tours in the Scottish Highlands and quickly developed a personal sound including other styles and repertoire from classical and folk music.

The Dorchester concert will feature tunes by Django Reinhardt and the Trio’s new Five Elements suite, an ode to our planet, as well as classically inspired pieces from Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, and some Vivaldi Four Seasons

The artist and the spider DORCHESTER

THE great Louise Bourgeois has an international reputation as an artist and sculptor—but will always be most widely known for her giant spider sculpture, which gives its name to the title of a film being shown at Dorchester Corn Exchange on Wednesday 3rd May at 7pm.

Coinciding with Dorset Museum’s Artist Rooms: Louise

Bourgeois, Dorchester Arts is showing the extraordinary documentary, The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine, filmed between 1993 and 2007, exploring the life and work of one of this celebrated and influential figure.

The film, directed by Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach, takes the viewer into the world of a legend of modern art and an icon of feminism, showing the artist in her studio and with her installations, shedding light on her intentions and inspirations.

On screen, the nonagenarian Louise Bourgeois is magnetic, mercurial and emotionally raw—an uncompromising artist whose life and work are imbued with her ongoing obsession with the mysteries of childhood.

Louise Bourgeois has for six decades been at the forefront of successive new developments, but always on her own powerfully inventive and disquieting terms. In 1982, at the age of 71, she became the first woman to be honoured with a major retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In the decades since, she has created her most powerful and persuasive work, including the series of massive spider structures that have been installed around the world.

It’s a fair cop! BRIDPORT

RADIO 4 favourite, cop-turned-comedian Alfie Moore comes to Bridport Arts Centre on Sunday 14th May at 8pm, with his latest show, Fair Cop Unleashed.

The new tour is based on a dramatic real-life incident from Alfie’s police casebook. Relive with him the thrilling ups and downs of the night a mysterious clown came to town and more than one life ended up in the balance.

It was no laughing matter—but this show certainly is! Enjoy Alfie’s unique brand of humour hilariously woven together with his personal insights into his life on the front-line of the police force.

It’d be a crime to miss it!

Comedy Store at the EP BRIDPORT

ROD Deering heads the list of comedy stars coming to the Electric Palace at Bridport on Friday 19th May, at 7.30pm.

The May visit by The Comedy Store to the Art Deco cinema and arts venue also features Ignacio Lopez and Eleanor Tiernan.

With nearly 40 years’ experience in the business and as the premier name in comedy, The Comedy Store is renowned as a breeding ground for new comedy talent, and remains the place to see tomorrow’s stars today.

Many of Britain’s top stand-ups, including Eddie Izzard, John Bishop, Jimmy Carr, Rhod Gilbert and Sarah Millican, cut their comedy teeth with The Comedy Store.

First in-house production

Lyme Regis

DAVID Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Glengarry Glen Ross, at the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis, from Wednesday 24th to Saturday 27th May, will be the theatre’s first in-house professional production.

The play is a blistering comedy about four real estate agents in Chicago who try to dupe unsuspecting clients into purchasing undesirable property at inflated prices. Their supervisor Blake proposes a contest—whoever sells the most wins a Cadillac. But whoever sells the list property wins a Cadillac, but whoever sells the least gets fired. In this production, directed by Billy Geraghty, all roles are gender-blind.

We witness these desperate, frustrated, angry and scared people trying to save themselves from ‘drowning’ in failure, by any means necessary. It becomes a Darwinian struggle between these flawed individuals in which they will try anything to survive. Thrown into this chaos are the victims of their scams and a classic ‘whodunnit’ mystery to solve. All this is mixed with a large helping of humour and bad language.

In America, the 1980s recession was severe. It also affected much of the world and is widely considered to have been the most severe recession since the Second World War. The destructive business practices that brought about the 2008 crash can be seen in the foundations of the Glengarry Glen Ross ‘hustlers’—and going further back the ‘snake oil sellers’ of the wild west that came before them.

If you’ve ever been the victim of a cold caller or a scam artist, then here’s your chance to enjoy a bit of payback.

Coronation music and fun

Lyme Regis

THE Marine Theatre at Lyme Regis is celebrating the coronation of King Charles III with a weekend of music and family fun, starting on Friday 5th May with Roddy Woomble, one of Scotland’s finest songwriters.

Known for his enigmatic lyrics, warm baritone voice and consummate gift for a tune, Roddy has released five solo albums to date. For the past two decades he has also been the frontman of Scottish alternative rock band Idlewild.