Merlin Theatre performances

TWO busy weeks of live action, plus world-class screenings are coming up at Frome’s Merlin Theatre.

On Tuesday 3rd October, La Boheme comes to the Merlin in a live screening direct from the Royal Opera House. The performance starts at 7.15pm and tickets for this well-loved Puccini opera are £16, with £10.50 concessions.

There’s a very different theatrical experience, encompassing live dance, music and drama, the following night, Wednesday 4th October when Mi Flamenco presents Incognito. The five-strong cast performs stunning flamenco dancing with hugely talented guitar accompaniment. Tickets are £12.50 adults, £10.50 students and the running time is 170 minutes, to include two intervals. Fans who missed Benedict Cumberbatch in the NTlive screening of Hamlet last year – and those who didn’t! – have another chance to see the production in an encore screening on Thurs. 5th October at 7pm

If you think Westminster politics is beyond a joke, then State of the Nation (on Friday 6th October at 7.45pm) is the show for you. Ayesha Hazarika MBE started her career as a stand-up comedian playing clubs across the country.

She then took what she thought was a natural diversion into the Labour Party as a special adviser working for Gordon Brown, Harriet Harman and Ed Miliband. Since leaving front-line politics she’s become a much sought after commentator writing for the FT, Guardian, Evening Standard, New Statesman and Grazia, but has also returned to her stand-up roots.

Her one-woman show ‘Tales from the Pink Bus’ was a sell-out hit at the 2016 Edinburgh festival and she’s been in huge demand on TV and radio recently. Ayesha lifts the lid on what life’s really like behind the scenes at Westminster with brutal honesty and humour and asks what’s next for British politics. Recommended 14+, all tickets are £15, runtime 70 minutes plus interval.

Opera returns on Saturday 7th October at 5.55pm, this time all the way from New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. The production is Bellini’s Norma.

Directed by Sir David McVicar, this evocative new production sets the action deep in a Druid forest, where nature and ancient ritual rule. The priestess Norma is torn between loyalty to her oppressed people and love for a Roman soldier. On the eve of a Druid revolt, she must choose between two agonising betrayals – only to learn that she herself has already been betrayed. Tickets are £16 and £10.50 and the run time approx. 3 hours.

Frome Film Club’s offering on Wednesday 11th October is Fire at Sea, a moving Italian documentary about the island of Lampedusa – first port of call for desperate migrants from Africa and the Middle East and the site of a major humanitarian crisis. Tickets for non members are £6.50.

Finally in these two weeks of first-rate, thought-provoking entertainment, on Thursday October 11th the theatre will be screening a RSC production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, captured live the previous night, with  Angus Jackson,  directing and Sope Dirisu in the title role. What a fortnight!