Preview By Gay Pirrie Weir

November

PREVIEW

Shock Horror coming to Dorchester

Kafka classic

DORCHESTER FRANZ Kafka wrote three of the greatest and most troubling works of the early 20th century, stories that have haunted the collective nightmare of Europe through two world wars, the Bolshevik revolution, the Cold War and beyond. Dorchester Drama has chosen a dramatisation of one of these, The Trial, for its autumn production, at the Corn Exchange on 25th and 26th November.

Joseph K is under arrest. He does not know what he has done, but he is most certainly under arrest. As he becomes embroiled in an arbitrary legal process by an unnamed and inaccessible authority, he seeks answers from friends, family and counsel without any clarification as to what might happen to him if he is found guilty.

The fiction created by this German-speaking Czech Jew, who died aged just 40, has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt and absurdity.

The short story, The Metamorphosis, famously opens with the protagonist, Gregor, waking to find he has been transformed into a large beetle. His last novel, the unfinished The Castle, features a protagonist known only as K who arrives in a village and struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities who govern it from a castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe situations like those found in his writing. Thunder Road

DORCHESTER IF the words Thunder Road fuse images of Mad Max movies, Beyond Thunderdome and Fury Road, maybe picturing a grim Tom Hardy strapped to the front of a dust-blasted armoured car driven by Charlize Theron as a one-eyed female warrior, you won’t be overly surprised to find that Thunder Road Theatre, coming to Dorchester Corn Exchange on Wednesday 9th November, is a cutting-edge chiller that will take you into a world of fear and hysteria.

In this new play, Shock Horror, the Yorkshire-based company introduces us to Herbert, a horror-obsessive, misfit filmmaker, who gets his kicks from scaring viewers. But his last act has awoken a nightmare and now he’s the one being haunted…

Thunder Road, whose previous plays include The Body Snatcher, promise to excite, unsettle and thrill those brave enough to book. Enter a sinister world of fear and hysteria, where iconic horror cinema unravels live on stage. Shock Horror is the vivid ghost story of a fanatic… his film… and the thing that hides inside.

Weird sisters

DORCHESTER WITH a November line-up that includes gothic horror and a play based on a novel by Franz Kafka, Dorchester Arts is definitely in the mood for Hallowe’en—even the

Join Abigail and Emma on a Witch Hunt at Dorchester Corn Exchange

comedians are getting in on the act with Witch Hunt at the Corn Exchange on Saturday 5th November.

The performers, Abigail and Emma, who call themselves A&E Comedy, weave a cautionary fairy tale for our time. It celebrates the wisdom of the witch, unpacks the notion of predator and conjures a world of coven-ready weird sisters.

Using buffoonery, puppetry and magic, and armed with a ‘wiccan’ sense of humour, A&E Comedy ask “Can we use witchcraft to take down the Patriarchy?” Yes we can.

The show is described as “ritualistic voodoo brouhaha designed to enchant and hex the pricks and predators”. Abigail and Emma say: “Imagine Vic and Bob doing The Crucible.” You have been warned!

Oysterband on the Road

LYME REGIS FANS of the legendary folk-rockers, Oysterband, have just one chance in the West Country to see them on their autumn tour, promoting their new album, Read the Sky. They will be playing the Marine Theatre at Lyme Regis on Saturday 26th November.

From their earliest days as a noisy, politicised ceilidh band in the late 1970s, Oysterband has kept evolving, long enough to put out not one, but two best-of compilations— Granite Years (2000) covering their career between 19861997, and This House Will Stand (2016) for the 1998-2015 period.

Maybe it was partly forced on them by the absurd complexity of trying to record a six-piece band under COVID regulations that were no sooner adopted than changed, but there’s a definite sense of urgency to many of the songs on Read The Sky. If anything, the band’s storytelling, with tales from Hong Kong to Huddersfield, has become more personal and more emotional.

Politically, they’re expressing themselves in greener terms now, both in anger and in elegy. The closing track, The Time Is Now, was released to coincide with the COP26 conference in Glasgow and premiered on the BBC Radio 2 Folk Show.

Dark comedy—Beautiful People

LYME REGIS THE ever inventive and hilarious Ridiculusmus Theatre is on the road this autumn with a new show, Beautiful People, coming to the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis, on Friday 18th November—the only West Country date.

It is a hilarious dark comedy about ageing and death. The work has been called ‘existential clowning’ by The Guardian. It won the top Herald Archangel Award in Edinburgh. Veteran reviewer and columnist for The Stage, Lyn Gardner wrote: “Every laugh is like a sharp physical pain in the heart.”

It used to be called Die! Die! Die! Old People Die! but the company had to change the title after the pandemic. In Scotland, however, they’ve complained about the change of title, and want them to revert to the old one.

The play is about an incredibly old couple ,Violet and Norman, who are both 120 years old. It takes them a full ten minutes to sit down in a chair. Then another five to get up again and fart. Things speed up occasionally when it’s time for coffee, or when a shady figure called Arthur arrives and stirs confusing memories of a love triangle.

Baroque on Tour

CONCERTS IN THE WEST THE November series of Concerts in the West brings a period instrument trio, Naomi Burrell, violin, Gavin Kibble, viola da gamba, and David Gerrard, harpsichord, for five concerts, beginning at Minehead, Methodist Church, on Thursday, 3rd November at 7pm.

There are two concerts on Friday 4th, at Bridport Arts Centre at 11.30am, and at Ilminster Arts Centre at 7.30pm. On Saturday 5th the trio will be at The Dance House, Crewkerne at 7.30pm, and on Sunday 6th, the final recital will be at Upwey’s St Laurence Church at 3pm.

The concert is called Les Gouts Reunis, with works by French, Italian and German baroque composers, Stradella, Corelli, Tresor, Couperin, Marais, Morel and Telemann.

Naomi Burrell is a British-Swiss violinist who specialises in historical performance. She plays with many of the UK’s leading early music ensembles including the English Baroque Soloists, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Academy of Ancient Music. Since 2018, Naomi has been concertmaster of the Old Street Band, the period instrument orchestra for English Touring Opera. She has played for theatrical and dance projects at Sadler’s Wells, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and in the West End.

Born in Southampton to a piano tuner and a bassoonist, Gavin Kibble studied at Oxford and the Royal Academy of Music, and performs as a cellist and viola da gamba player with many of the UK’s leading orchestras and ensembles, including the English Concert, the Academy of Ancient Music, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He is principal cellist of the Old Street Band.

David Gerrard plays the harpsichord, clavichord, fortepiano and organ. In demand as a continuo harpsichordist and organist, he performs with both modern and period instrument groups including Dunedin Consort, The English Concert, Royal Northern Sinfonia, and The Sixteen.

Comedy at the EP

BRIDPORT BRIDPORT has an exceptionally busy month in November, with high profile speakers at Bridport Literature Festival—many already sold out—but there is plenty of entertainment as well, including an impressive comedy line-up at the Electric Palace, beginning with Milton Jones on Thursday 17th, followed by the Comedy Store on Friday 18th and Daliso Chaponda on Saturday 26th.

In his new show, Milton: Impossible, the eccentric and hilarious Milton Jones reveals the truth about being an international spy, before being given a disappointing new identity which forced him to appear on Mock the Week and Live at the Apollo. But this is also a love story with a twist, or even a really bad sprain.

The Comedy Store, which announces its line-up shortly before the performance date, is one of the biggest names in comedy, with nearly 40 years’ experience in the business. It is renowned as a breeding ground for new comedy talent, and remains the place to see tomorrow’s stars today. Big names from the Comedy Store archive include Eddie Izzard, John Bishop, Jimmy Carr, Rhod Gilbert and Sarah Millican. Check out the Electric Palace website for the line-up.

Daliso Chaponda was a finalist in Britain’s Got Talent and is the star of BBC Radio 4’s Citizen of Nowhere. It’s fair to say that 2020-2021 didn’t go to plan for Daliso … but he performed online daily to millions of viewers, and this is your chance to see what this master of satire has been cooking up!

The eccentric and hilarious Milton Jones in Bridport

Bear necessities

BRIDPORT LITTLE Bulb Theatre comes to Bridport Arts Centre on Saturday 26th November at 2pm, with a delightful show for children, Hibernation.

The biggest yawn, the cosiest bed,

The softest blanket, the sleepiest head,

Winter’s approaching, prepare for a rest,

With some help from the animals who hibernate best.

Come and be transported to a magical forest full of mirth, live music and marvellous creatures.

As the nights drawn in and temperatures drop, staying wrapped up warm in our beds seems like a great idea. But have you ever imagined what it would be like to stay asleep for the whole of winter? Some creatures are experts and they’re here to show you how.

Contemporary Kathak

PORTLAND AND STURMINSTER NEWTON THE acclaimed South Asian dance and music performers, Sonia Sabri Company, are returning to the Artsreach circuit on 19th November at the Exchange, Sturminster Newton, and 20th at Royal Manor Theatre, Portland, with their new production, Roshni.

The name comes from the Persian word meaning light or brilliance,. The show is an intimate crafting of dance and live music, transporting and uplifting the audience on a journey of joy.

Sonia and Sarvar Sabri, with an ensemble of skilled

musicians, present a captivating combination of striking Kathak dance, with live music and vocals from a global palette of styles, driven by the bold rhythms of tabla percussion. Kathak is a movement language of virtuosic foot percussion, rapid spins, geometrical patterns, poignant mime and gesture, all intricately woven with the live music.

Sonia Sabri Company has an international reputation for presenting Kathak dance in a contemporary context. Through work relevant to modern audiences, the company presents traditional Indian culture in a contemporary setting.

Artistic director and dancer-choreographer Sonia Sabri was part of the creative team working on the opening show for the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Sarvar Sabri is a renowned tabla player and composer who regularly works across artforms and for theatre, TV, radio and film.

The musicians are Katie Stevens who specialises in eastern European, klezmer, Irish and Scandinavian music, playing traditional woodwinds such as the Bulgarian kaval, Irish flute and whistles, Swedish pipa and Arabic nay, and violinist Ruth Lyndsay specialises in folk and traditional music.

A Bolt of Horror

WEYMOUTH AND VILLAGES CLASSIC gothic horror movies of the 1930s have inspired Is That a Bolt in Your Neck?, the latest show from Gonzo Moose, which is coming to Dorset and Devon, starting at the Bay Theatre at Weymouth College on Tuesday 1st November.

There are two dates with Villages in Action in Devon, at Sticklepath village hall on Friday 4th November and Stockland on Saturday 5th and it’s back in Dorset for two Artsreach dates, at Stalbridge village hall on 19th and the Allendale Centre in Wimborne (a new venue) on the 20th.

Driving Social History

THE world of cars that we have ‘loved and hated’ and that once gave us ‘unimaginable forms of freedom’ is ending says Bryan Appleyard in his elegantly written book The Car: The Rise and Fall of the Machine that made the Modern World. He says the car is now ‘limiting freedom’. Cities, he says, are now ‘choked with cars and littered with machines and buildings that feed them.’ The world of cars is changing, but what a history the internal combustion engine has created. Bryan will be in conversation with local author, Boris Starling at Bridport Literary Festival in November. It is an event for those with an interest in social history as much as for the petrolheads among us. More than any other technology, cars have transformed our culture. Almost everything we now need, want, imagine or aspire to assumes the existence of cars in all their complex systems. They have transformed our sense of distance and made the world infinitely more available—inspiring cinema, music and literature.

Bryan will also give a short appreciation and celebration of his great friend James Lovelock CH CBE FRS, the British independent scientist and originator of The Gaia Theory who lived locally at Abbotsbury and died last summer on his 101st birthday. Bryan and James became great friends over the years and shared a great many propositions. Cited as one of the world’s top 100 intellectuals, readers can also see Robin Mills’ memories of James Lovelock in our September 2022 issue at www.marshwoodvale.com.

Friday November 11, Electric Palace, 4.30 pm. Tickets from Bridport TIC, 01308 424901 email bridport.tic@bridport-tc.gov.uk or online at bridlit.com.