Monthly Archives: August 2011

Some Enchanted Evening? South Pacific, Barbican Theatre, London, 30th August

South Pacific…..or the salutatory tale of a cockeyed optimist afloat in choppy waters…. To those who know South Pacific only either through the film or from a recording it may appear to be simply another of those cloyingly saccharin musicals … Continue reading

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Taking the high road and the low road……

I’ve been back from my close encounter with stand-up comedy in Edinburgh for a week. And yet I feel eerily in the same unreal comic reality…… Take this furore for example over Dr David Starkey’s appearance on Newsnight.  The first thing … Continue reading

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Edinburgh – the good life on fringe benefits….

My festival Sun-day   At least it was sunshine all the way. I’d caught the train from Lancaster in the driving rain and the mist engulfed the hills of the Lake District but as if by magic after we pulled … Continue reading

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Rioting and riotous times or how people in glass houses ended up being stoned.

Civil disorder isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s older than recorded history and its presence in all societies may be taken as read long before the riot act was written. The brutality of the mob instinctively disturbs and perplexes. The vast … Continue reading

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Buxton Opera Festival 2011 – week commencing 16th July

Their conversation is become just like the Spa-water they drink, which has all the pertness and flatulency of champagne, without its spirit or flavour. Careless, R.B. Sheridan, A School for Scandal Buxton, a spa town nestling between the High Peak … Continue reading

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