St joseph?s youth choir Summer concert, Sunday July 13, 3pm at St. Joseph?s RC church, Brook Lane, Thame.
The popular youth choir, with two recordings under its belt, returns to showcase its youngsters in a summer concert. The concert features songs from stage & screen and some well-loved hymns,all to charm and delight. In aid of St Joseph?s School Building Fund. Tickets from 01844 212428.
THE Tetsworth annual Village Fun Day is being held on Saturday, July 12, at Tetsworth Memorial Hall, 2pm-4pm. All village organisations are invited to take part.
Lots of fun for all the family. Stalls include: Refreshments, Games, Raffle, Treasure Hunt, Tombola, Books, Cakes, Bring & Buy, Lucky Dip, & Lots More!
Attractions include Car Boot/Table Top Sale
THE people of Thame are being offered the opportunity to attend the second concert in support of ‘Two Moors Festival,’ at the Cadogan Hall in London, and to travel there in comfort and leave the car at home.
The concert will be taking place on Wednesday, September 17, at 7.30 pm and a coach will run from Thame and Watlington. Those who went to the first in 2006 will recall an evening of great music and great fun. The main festival happens in October, when classical music is played in the churches across Exmoor and Dartmoor by very gifted up and coming young musicians. This London event is a showcase for some of the regular performers who give their time and talents for the occasion, helping to raise funds for the main festival.
The programme is varied, ranging from Hummel to Ivor Novello, from Saint-Sa
…to July 12; Thame Players present Richard Harris’s “Outside Edge”. Two couples united only by a Sunday league cricket team.
At the Players Theatre, Nelson Street, Thame OX9 2DP. Email: thameplayers@aol.com or visit Thame Players website
Tel 01865 358907.
Tickets for all Thame Players productions are available from Tickets Anywhere, Greyhound Walk, Thame: 0871 2227232. Tickets available from the theatre during the week of the show, 7pm – 8pm weekdays.
Telephone 01844 212012 during these times.
THIS year, Towersey Village Festival is packed full with more workshops than ever before. From Fandango and Harmony Singing to Lantern-making and Yoga, the Festival?s wide and varied workshop programme offers activities for all ages and abilities. All that?s really left to decide is which one to try first!
Towersey offers an enormous array of dance workshops including Breton, Scandinavian, Contra, Rapper, French Bourrees, Austrian, Fandango, Irish Step, Molly, Border Morris, North West Morris, Longsword and Appalachian. For those keen to flex their vocal chords there are workshops in Harmony Singing, Global Vocals and festival-goers can even learn how to Sing Like a Bloke! Music workshops range from Afro Brazilian Dance, Austrian and Hungarian music to American Traditional music and English Song as well as Concertina classes and the ever-popular Slow and Steady Music sessions. The Festival also offers Yoga sessions, lantern-making and circus skills workshops.
Towersey?s Shooting Roots project offers young people aged 12-25 an opportunity to develop new skills, meet loads of other young people and experience the excitement of being involved at the grass roots of a folk festival. This year?s workshops include the Funky World Band, the Ceilidh Project as well as Theatre, Craft, Dance and Song. The work of all the Shooting Roots participants will be presented in a dazzling Showcase on Monday evening.
There are also loads of great activities on offer for the younger ones at the Towersey Children?s Festival, which is renowned for being one of the best on the scene. This year?s programme includes Taiko drumming, song workshops, storytelling, craft workshops, parachute games, circus skills, dance classes, Mini Melodeons and a ceilidh workshop with Whapweasel. There will also be a magical family puppet show from Hand to Mouth Theatre Company called Head in the Clouds, the Grand Family Ceilidh and a chance to experience the hugely popular Family Bat Walk.
Towersey?s workshop programme offers a great opportunity to learn new skills, meet new people and get truly caught up and involved in the Festival atmosphere. More information and all the latest updates can be found on the Festival website at www.towerseyfestival.com.
THE Oxford Shakespeare Company was about to stage its new production of Shakespeare?s Twelfth Night, one of his most uproarious comedies, when their leading actress, Claire Cordier, was carried off to hospital with appendicitis!
This happened four days before the show was due to open. With amazing luck, they managed to get hold of a substitute, Hannah Boyd, who not only knows the part but was free to step in at hyper-short notice.
You would never guess this watching the production today, on its first night at Wadham College gardens. Hannah is a really admirable Viola, and a perfectly self-possessed heroine, sporting her doublet and hose with androgynous panache. There was no time to take Claire?s picture out of the programme and put in Hannah?s.
Oliver Gartside, who acts Viola?s identical twin brother, Sebastian, commented that it was odd for him to find himself opposite a different actress at the last moment, but Hannah had worked really hard to master the different cuts in this production and familiarize herself with everything going on ? all in three days!
The director, Bill Bankes-Jones, must be immensely relieved that they found her and that the production could open as planned without most of the audience even being aware of the near-catastrophe.
This is an extremely funny production, with a sea-side theme, and a lot of tomfoolery in every Act. Its light-hearted use of props such as Punch and Judy puppets, rubber rings and plastic cricket bats adds a touch of surreal farce and sheer zaniness. Tom Walker as the clown Feste and Dafydd Gwyn Howells as the self-indulgent Sir Toby Belch are a well-matched pair, both very talented and funny in different ways. Feste?s Elvis impression when he sings ?Oh mistress mine? is priceless, and Sir Toby?s management of the mock-duel between Viola and poor little Sir Andrew Aguecheek is done very well.
James Lavender is brilliant as Malvolio, the pompous, priggish steward, who gets his come-uppance. He starts off dressed as an undertaker, then re-appears in the middle of the night dressed in striped pyjamas and a hair-net. After reading the forged letter, and falling for the trick played on him, he appears in?well, I won?t spoil it for anyone by telling them in advance exactly what Malvolio is wearing when he comes forth, convinced that Olivia is madly in love with him and wants to marry him, but I promise you it is hilarious. In this production, certain details have been altered, in order to make Malvolio even less likeable and maximize the impression that he is ?sick of self-love?.
It is understandable that Bill Bankes-Jones wanted to make these surreptitious changes, because otherwise it may seem that the joke that Sir Toby and Maria play on him really goes a bit too far. However, when Feste dresses up as a Deep South preacher to visit Malvolio, who is locked in a beach bathing-hut, we are too busy laughing to have much concern for that.
In keeping with the sea-side theme, Count Orsino wears Bermuda shorts and a dressing-gown, not a very flattering garb, and he does not seem so irresistible that Viola would have fallen madly in love with him at first sight
Twelfth Night continues at Wadham College Gardens, Oxford until 1st August 2008.
http://www.oxfordshakespearecompany.co.uk/index
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT’S ON IN OXFORD ON:
http://www.oxfordprospect.co.uk/OxfordReview.htm
Photo: Hannag Boyd
A quiz night held at Chinnor Rugby club, in Thame, recently, in aid of the Richard Wheeler Memorial, supporting the British Heart Foundation, raised a total of
THE CPM Thame 10km road race will start at 9.30 am at the Thame Leisure Centre. Entry forms can be downloaded from the club?s website: www.thamerunners.co.uk, and are also available from the Information Centre at Thame Town Hall.
This year?s event will take in a larger section of the Phoenix Trail and will have electronic chip timing for the first time to ensure accurate timing of the 1,000 runners expected to take part.
The children?s fun run will be back as well as part of the 2008 event.
St Joseph?s RC School & Church, Brook Lane, Thame, 11am to 2pm at St Joseph’s school.
With a great variety of food, bar & children?s activities, as well as the ever popular cake, plant & book stalls.
Come and join the fun on our inflatable assault course, plus lots more!
Supporting the British Heart Foundation – Friday, June 27 at Chinnor Rugby Club.
8.00pm start – Tables of 6-8 people –