Culture

46 The West Dorset Magazine, December 16, 2022 Culture Everyone has a ball at this Cinderella

CINDERELLA Poole Lighthouse Until Saturday, December 31

When a costume makes you laugh out loud, you know it’s going to be a stonker of a show. The moment the Ugly Sisters (Alim Jadavji and Andrew Pollard) appeared in their bikinis I started laughing – they were absolutely hilarious. Their timing was impeccable. One of the many stand-out stars of the show was Fairy Godmother Lauren Azania. The woman possesses an epic voice, which lent itself superbly to the many 70s disco classics and modern day hits in the show. Her sidekick trainee fairies Ethan Cawthorn and Tilda Collecott were great fun and the trio provided a super alternative to the usual Fairy Godmother schtick. Cinderella herself (Charlotte Wood) also had a great voice – in fact the singing was possibly the best throughout the cast that I’ve ever heard in a panto. Chris Jarvis kept the action moving and the laughs coming as Buttons, while Simon Rawlings’ Baron Hardup was a great character – often the Baron seems a bit of a watery cove, but Simon drew out a likeable, bumbling fellow. Prince Charming (Tyger Drew Honey) and Dandini (Alex Vass) had a great rapport as Dandini tried to hide his unrequited love for the prince and help him find his true love. The choreography, the set –and those amazing costumes – all combined to provide a riotously funny, entertaining night at the Lighthouse, keeping me, and my 14-year-old son Robert, laughing for a good couple of hours. There were no weak links, no dropping of the ball throughout. Highly recommended for a fabulous night out. To book go to lighthousepoole.co.uk or call 01202 280000.

WHAT A HOOT: Ugly Sisters Alim and Andrew

MIRANDA ROBERTSON

Last panto before £29m upgrade is a hoot

DICK WHITTINGTON Octagon, Yeovil

Another riotous panto has been served up at Yeovil’s Octagon – featuring a bevy of rats, a super-creepy, gigantic purple octopus and a cat called Caroline. Jack Glanville never fails to turn on the panto fun taps at Christmas and this year was no different, with his Billy Fitzwarren holding the plot together (and sometimes losing it). The funniest moment for me this year was Billy in the lift – I won’t spoil it for you by explaining further. Gordon Cooper is always fabulous as the dame, with his Glaswegian rasp rendering the constant jokes even funnier. The duo kept up the wisecracks and asides at a rapid rate, telling the story of how Dick Whittington (Daniel Parkinson) defeated the rats to become Lord Mayor of London and meet his true love Alice Fitzwarren (Javana Forrest). Thom Bradford made a most excellent King Rat, with a believable evilness and great comic timing. His off-stage wife Kathryn Nash starred as Fairy Bowbells, appearing in a shower of sparks to keep the action moving along, while James Bamford pranced about as Dick’s larger than life cat. The Octagon is set to close in early 2023 for a £29 million theatre upgrade. The theatre will be fully refurbished in the hopes it will attract big shows and high-profile acts. The new theatre will provide a community hub, with a dance studio, extended theatre space and two smaller cinema rooms.

n octagon-theatre.co.uk 01935 422884

MIRANDA ROBERTSON

This year I am reviewing two pantos –one either side of West Dorset in Poole and Yeovil. Apologies to the ones I missed! Other pantos are being staged at: n Weymouth Pavilion Sleeping Beauty (till January 2) weymouthpavilion.com | 01305 783225 n Salisbury Playhouse Cinderella (till January 8) wiltshirecreative.co.uk | 01722 320333 n Bournemouth Pavilion Beauty and The Beast (till January 2) bournemouthpavilion.co.uk | 0300 500 0595

A major new exhibition of work by artists of the storied East London Group, much of it featuring West Dorset, will be shown for the first time at Lighthouse Poole from January 20 until April 8. Several of these paintings, which depict Weymouth, Portland, Lyme Regis and Poole, are thought to be on public show for the first time since the 1930s –when the group’s work was shown alongside that of Gauguin, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne and Picasso. Formalised as the East London Group in 1929, these were working-class artists who learned to paint at evening classes in Bethnal Green and Bromley-by-Bow. They were tutored by the British Impressionist John Cooper, a greengrocer’s son, and mentored by his fellow Slade School graduates Walter Sickert and William Coldstream. By the early 1930s the group was the toast of the London art set and, during the 1980s, the group’s work enjoyed something of a revival. A book called From Bow to Biennale: Artists of the East London Group was published in 2012. At around the same time, Dorset farmer’s son Alan Waltham and his wife Janeta, the niece of East London Group members Walter Steggles and his younger brother Harold, inherited an extensive archive of the group’s work. Since then, the work of the East London Group has been enjoying a second revival, with a series of exhibitions in London, Southend and Southampton, as well as a Sky Arts documentary produced on the works. The group’s name notwithstanding, the streets of London feature in little more than a quarter of the 730 paintings attributed to the East London Group, with most of the works capturing rural and coastal scenes in Dorset, Essex, Suffolk and Kent. The group’s link to Dorset was probably made through John Cooper’s friendship with Slade School graduate and future Admiralty war artist Richard Eurich, who was in Lyme Regis over the winter of 1932-33. Harold and Walter Steggles were known to be avid travellers in their small Ford 8 car, and stopped in Dorset on the way back from a painting trip to Devon and Cornwall in 1938. That year, they exhibited a selection of Dorset paintings in a joint show at the Lefevre Gallery in 1938 and other sketches are known to survive from Corfe Castle, Affpuddle and Briantspuddle. Fellow members of the East London Group also showed paintings made of Poole Harbour, Weymouth, Charmouth, Stoke Abbott, Lyme Regis and the Purbeck Hills. In the 1980s Wally painted the road to Edmondsham, near Verwood, as well as other views of Dorset from Bulbarrow and Pilsdon Pen.

ON SHOW: Poole Harbour, captured by Elwin H Hawthorne

LOCAL IMAGES: Cecil Osborne’s Weymouth Harbour, Chesil Bank from Portland by Harold Steggles and, right, John Cooper’s painting of Lyme Regis

Art group’s first showing since the 1930s in county

n For tickets and information on the Lighthouse Poole exhibition call 01202 280000 or visit lighthousepoole.co.uk