The best of what’s on in the next 7 days…
By 
Ronan Keating: Tickets left for former Boyzone singer Ronan Keating on Tuesday at Colston Hall
By Susie Weldon
Feeling bored? Here’s our choice of the best of Bristol’s stage, music and comedy in the week ahead.
THEATRE
If it’s March in Bristol … it’s Shakespeare time. That’s certainly the way it seems right now with four of the Bard’s plays coming up.
Next Thursday, exciting Firebird Theatre brings its deeply personal re-telling of The Tempest – a very human tale about the complexities, joys and tragedies of real life – to the Bristol Old Vic. It runs to Saturday March 6, tickets: £8/£6.
If you’ve not yet seen it, make sure you catch Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, at the Tobacco Factory in Bedminster. It’s had great reviews — ‘a hands-up magical production’, according to our own Sophie Lomax. It runs to March 20, tickets: £20-£15.
And look out for Juliet and Her Romeo, artistic director Tom Morris’s first major production at the Bristol Old Vic which opens the following week, and the National Theatre’s touring production of Twelfth Night in April.
Fancy something a little more offbeat? Why not try The Lamentable Tragedy by the Wonder Club? It’s an extraordinary site specific performance at 15-19 Stokes Croft – think ‘interactive promenade theatre’, installation art and music by some of Bristol’s leading artists. It finishes this Sunday, tickets: £10/£6.
The master of psychological illusion returns to the stage next week when Derren Brown once again bewilders, baffles and bewitches audiences in the second leg of his Enigma tour. He’s at the Hippodrome on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and again on March 18. Tickets cost £34.75.
COMEDY
There’s loads of comedy in the week ahead. The casually urbane Alistair Barrie brings his slick, “exquisitely provocative” and contemporary show to the Hen & Chicken tonight, with support from Gareth Richards plus compere John Robins. The show begins at 8.45pm, £10.
Popular comic and compere Rob Collins, cynical journalist and Times obituary writer Liam Mullone, award-winning Nathan Caton and the ‘lightening fast’ Jeremy O’Donnell take to the stage tonight in Metropolis’s stand up comedy night, 7pm, £15.
Bristol’s brilliant off-the-cuff comedy improvisation show Instant Wit performs for the first time at the Riverstation this Sunday. Expect excessive silliness, quick-fire gags and rib-cracking laughter, 8pm, £10.
You’ve just got time to catch Publick Transport’s The Department of Smelling Pishtakes at The Brewery Theatre. This absurd, colourful comedy, set in a Russian governmental office where two civil servants jostle for power, finishes on Sunday, 8.15pm, £9/£7.
Following his sell-out 2008 tour, best selling DVD, ‘Dara O Briain Talks Funny’ and his debut book ‘Tickling The English’, award-winning stand up comedian Dara O’Briain hits the road again with a brand new show. He’s at the Bristol Hippodrome on Tuesday and Wednesday (and back on October 10), 8pm, £25.
MUSIC
Cardiff-based indie/punk band Los Campesinos! is at the Thekla tonight, with support from Swanton Bombs and Islet, doors 7pm, curfew 10pm, tickets £9 adv. Or, for something more acoustically mellow, “the renaissance man of English folk” Chris Wood performs at Bristol Folk House, 8pm, £12.
Pop’s Mika and Newton Faulkner have both sold out at Colston Hall next week but there are still tickets left for former Boyzone singer Ronan Keating on Tuesday. He’s promoting his new album, Songs For My Mother — described as “a beautiful collection of songs that Ronan remembers his mum listening to throughout his childhood” — aah. Tickets cost £30.
The first reggae orchestra in Bristol and the South West makes its live world premiere at St George’s Bristol on Sunday. The St Pauls Reggae Orchestra takes to the stage with leading jazz-funk trombonist Dennis Rollins, 7.30pm, £4.99. It’s preceded by a workshop led by Dennis Rollins for young musicians of all abilities, 12noon, £5 (or £7 joint workshop/concert).
Next Friday, the Noisettes bring their brilliant brand of ‘original, adventurous, highly infectious’ Sixties’ tinged soul and sleek pop to 02 Academy. Curfew 10pm, £14.25.
FILM
Fans of Michael Moore’s work will want to catch his latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, which opened at the Watershed on Friday and runs to March 11. http://www.watershed.co.uk/exhibits/2223/
Billed as a provocative attack on corporate America and the system that brought the US economy to its knees, it’s had audiences applauding enthusiastically — indication of the fury people feel at the way bank chief executives seem to have got away scot free with hundreds of billions of public money.
Capitalism: A Love Story has all of the veteran tub-thumper’s trademark style of archive footage, impassioned interviews and humour — as well as moving human stories of people for whom the economic crisis is not merely an irritating blip along their journey of earning millions of dollars a year but a personal tragedy.
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