Rehearsals for Milborne Port Opera’s next show “The Sorcerer” by Gilbert & Sullivan start on Thursday September 3rd.
Don’t be put off by the name of the company. “Opera” sounds a bit pretentious, but as anyone who has seen a show will tell you, it’s far from it.
This is your chance to be in at the start! If you want to appear in the chorus, or play a character part, come along to Milborne Port Primary School on the 3rd at 7.45. Don’t worry about singing – we’ll lick you into shape!
Rehearsals are a weekly commitment – just a couple of hours on Thursdays. The first month is spent singing, an exhilarating and fun experience. Auditions take place sometime in October, and they start blocking the moves and the dialogue from November onwards.
You will need to reserve the week 11th-16th April 2016 for final rehearsals and performances.
Join this award-winning, friendly company and give some meaning to your life during the winter months.
Regular activities (Village Hall unless stated). Mondays Pilates 6pm Tuesdays Upholstery 10.30 am , Badminton 8pm, Wednesdays Adult tap dancing 6.15pm Thursdays Art 10.00 Fridays Art 10.00
Other Events
Sat 1st Open Garden at The Grange 3-5pm Mon 3rd Ladies Lunch Group Chetnole Inn, Chetnole Wed 5th Music Night Half Moon Inn 8.45 pm Thurs 6th W.I Gluten free cookery Village Hall 7.30pm Thurs 13th Parish Council Meeting. Village Hall 7.30pm
St John’s Church services
2nd August 9.15am Holy Communion with Sunday School 9th August 11 am Morning Prayer 16th August 9.15am Holy Communion 23rd August 8.30am Holy Communion (BCP) 30th August United Service at Templecombe 10.30am
Peter Longman, owner of the Grange, one of Horsington’s nicest and largest houses, is generously opening the lovely garden to the village for the afternoon of Saturday 1st August, in aid of the Horsington Parish Church.
The garden opens between 3 and 5 pm.
There will be a tombola and a raffle, refreshments, an exhibition by local artists, and live music played by David Jones, former resident and pupil of Horsington School.
If you are driving, you can enter from the A 357, but it might be safer to park in the village and walk up Rectory Lane, which is barred to cars for the afternoon.
Entry is by a suggested donation of at least £2.00. Children 12 and under go free.
If you despair of the TV schedules this summer, then get over to Shaftesbury Arts Centre and have a very entertaining evening watching some fine actors perform 2 plays by England’s most prolific (and funniest) living playwright Alan Ayckbourn. House and Garden play until Saturday 18th July, and if you’re lucky, you may still grab a ticket.
The plays, on separate evenings, share the same cast, characters and simultaneous action.
While marriages fall apart and political careers get ruined in the House, other mayhem is happening simultaneously in the Garden. (Don’t ask what, your reviewer won’t see Garden until tonight.)
This is live theatre at its best. Great characters, a very funny plot and some wonderful moments of farcial chaos. But it will also make you think. Ayckbourn has mastered the art of putting the English middle classes under the microscope, prodding them with a hot needle and then recording with relish, and humour, what makes them tick – and us squirm. Yes, we’re all there.
Performances begin at 7.30. And there’s an excellent Indian restaurant in the car park for a great meal afterwards. Perfect!
House and Garden, 2 connected playsby Alan Ayckbourn, playing at the Shaftesbury Arts Centre until Saturday 18 July have received great reviews from the Fine Times Recorder, the on line arts magazine for Somerset and Dorset.
Regular activities (Village Hall unless stated). Mondays Pilates 6pm Tuesdays Upholstery 10.30 am , Badminton 8pm, Wednesdays Adult tap dancing 6.15pm Thursdays Art 10.00 Fridays Art 10.00
Other Events
Wed 1st Music Night Half Moon Inn 8.45 pm Thurs 2nd W.I Tai-Chi Village Hall 7.30pm Mon 6th Ladies Lunch Group The Acorn, Evershot
Wed 8th Pins and Needles. Springfield, Horsington Marsh 2pm Tel.371215 Thurs 9th Parish Council Meeting. Village Hall 7.30pm Wed 15th North Cheriton Gardener’s Society
St John’s Church services
5th July 9.15am Holy Communion with Sunday School 12th July 11 am Morning Prayer 19th July 9.15am Holy Communion 26th July 8.30am Holy Communion (BCP)
FUTURE EVENT 1ST AUGUST 2015 OPEN GARDEN AT THE GRANGE, HORSINGTON. IN AID OF CHURCH FUNDS
Alan Ayckbourn’s two interconnecting plays House and Garden, directed by Mark Blackham will be Shaftesbury Arts Centre’s Summer production this year, running from Friday 10 to Saturday 18 July.
The two plays, originally written to be performed simultaneously in two adjoining spaces with the same characters, are played by the same cast, and set in a present day country manor HOUSE and its GARDEN.
In the GARDEN, frenzied preparations are underway for the annual village fête. Just how famous is the beautiful French actress who is opening it? Is there someone sinister lurking in the bushes? And exactly what does go on in the fortune teller’s tent?
In the HOUSE, Teddy has dreams of a bright political future as the new local MP. The only thing barring his path is an urgent need to clean up his private life before the Prime Minister’s special envoy arrives.
At Shaftesbury the plays will run one after the other, on successive days, with Saturday matinees enabling people to see both on the same day. The same cast performs in both plays – their characters remain the same throughout!
The two plays are classic Ayckbourn, funny, poignant, full of accurate observations, and are equally valid on their own or in either order. There is no need to see both, but the audience is encourage to do so because it is only on seeing the second play that the ‘full picture’ is revealed – and that is where the real magic, and Ayckbourn’s talent as a playwright, lies.
Helen Purdue
To see both plays, come the same time/day each week, or on two successive evenings – with £1 off each ticket if you book for both.
Mark Blackham has most recently directed Art and Educating Rita at Shaftesbury, Five Kinds of Silence, Gillingham Arts Workshop’s semi-finalist entry in the All England Festival of Theatre. His previous Ayckbourn experience includes directing Absent Friends and appearing in Absurd Person Singular. Blog readers will know him as a consummate performer in Milborne Port Opera’s HMS Pinafore and Iolanthe.
The cast of 14 includes Dominic Burd (Nicholas Nickleby, Macbeth, Not About Heroes), Alex Chase (Blackadder, Much Ado About Nothing, Aladdin) , Joni Clowrey (Daisy Pulls it Off, Godspell, Going Going), Stephen McDadd (Art, South Pacific, Carousel, Educating Rita, Run for your Wife) and Janine Rutter (Wait Until Dark, Lark Rise to Candleford).
There are only 4 performances of each play – don’t miss it!
Well, he made it! Chris Bailward strolled into the bar of the Half Moon, Horsington on Thursday 25 June, punctual to the second, after a gruelling 1894 mile “Tour de France” alone, unaided, and self-funded, in aid of the Disasters Emergency Committee.
His journey had taken him to the Alps, the Mediterranean, the vineyards of Bordeaux and the Loire, and the battlefields of Normandy. He planned the trip meticulously, and made every single one of his stages.
A tremendous achievement, and we are sure all Horsington and South Cheriton residents will feel vicarious pride in his considerable feat.
Do take the trouble to read the full account of his travels on his very entertaining blog.
And please, please, donate if you can – online -via Just Giving.
The much-respected Jeremy Warner of the “Daily Telegraph” still holds the view that a financial crash is on the way. The trouble is, he doesn’t know when.
His analysis is persuasive, with the conclusion that “the most likely corrective to bubble-like conditions in asset prices is an American boom, which through higher rates would in turn cause capital flight from the developing world and might therefore also trigger another emerging market crisis.
“Either that, or the now in my view inevitable correction will come from a clear blue sky – a completely unanticipated event.”
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