It’s nearly the weekend, so if you’re looking for some inspiration for what to do, look no further. Live music, comedy, theatre and more. And don’t forget to catch the new exhibition at The Higgins too.
Enjoy!
Thursday 3 – Saturday 5 November 2022
Musical theatre: Youth Academy Group presents: High School Musical
Bedford Corn Exchange Thursday/Friday @ 7.30pm Saturday @ 2pm and 6.30pm
Tickets: £18.50/£16.50
Troy Bolton , the star athlete at a small-town high school, falls for nerdy beauty Gabriella Montez at a holiday karaoke party.
When they return to campus, Troy and Gabriella audition for the upcoming school musical. Meanwhile, the jealous Sharpay Evans conspires to squelch their chances. The two must struggle to make it to auditions while also meeting their existing obligations to the basketball team and the academic decathlon.
Friday 4 November 2022
Live music: Henge
Bedford Esquires @ 8pm
Tickets: £14
Attention Humans! This is HENGE.
We are not from this world.
We bring you music from distant planets.
Extra-terrestrial joymongers – HENGE – have been delighting audiences in the UK and Europe since they landed on Planet Earth seven years ago. Their scintillating live performances earned them ‘Best Live Act’ at the Independent Festival Awards and they have since cemented their reputation with two acclaimed albums, numerous tours and regular main-stage festival appearances.
Saturday 5 November 2022
Salvation Army (next to Vue Cinema) @ 6pm
Saturday 5 November 2022
Bedford Esquires @ 7.30pm
Special Kinda Madness return to Bedford Esquires to perform a truly authentic set from each band, combining the phenomenally energetic stage presence of The Specials with the wonderful iconic tunes of the Madness ‘Nutty Boys’.
Saturday 5 November 2022
Theatre: Les Dawson: Flying High
Quarry Theatre @ 7.30pm
Tickets: £22/£20
Jon Culshaw (Dead Ringers, The Impressions Show) stars in this funny, affectionate and poignant celebration of the much-missed comedy legend.
Join Les as he summons forth a wealth of characters and incidents from his eventful life and career, as he travels on Concorde at twice the speed of sound 68,000 feet above the Earth, in this new play from BAFTA and Olivier Award-winning writer Tim Whitnall and director Bob Golding.
Saturday 5 November 2022
North London outfit Fake Turins explore the psychedelic strut of New York City in the 70’s, using their strength in numbers to provide an immersive experience, the 11-piece unit explore noise, disco and funk through an unrelenting groove.
The band were longlisted for Glastonbury Emerging Talent, played their first two festivals abroad in Left Of The Dial and Klomppop and released a string of well-received singles and their debut EP entitled ‘Time Flowers Now’ – a remix EP followed with a stand out mix by Leo Zero of live favourite ‘Down!’.
Saturday 5 November 2022
This screening is followed by a Q&A with the venue team & an invited speaker (TBC)
We’re told we all have a right to roam in the countryside – but does that apply to everyone equally?
Right of Way is a new feature-length programme that mixes stunning new artists’ commissions with historical archive films that give a bigger picture of questions of access and inclusion in the UK countryside.
Saturday 5 November 2022
Quiz: The Big Online Movie Quiz
Hosted on Zoom by the Place Theatre @
Tickes: £10/team (maximum six players)
Join the film programming team from The Place Bedford for a quick-fire 10-round movie quiz.
Test your knowledge from across genres, decades and countries in this team quiz competition. Know your Goddard from your God-awful? Your Noir from your Noe? Your Bout de Souffle from your Das Boot?
Music, clips, posters – your movie knowledge will be put to the test!
Saturday 5 November 2022
Film: The Timekeepers of Eternity
The Place Theatre @ 6.30pm
Tickets: Pay what you can from £2
Welcome to your new favourite Stephen King adaptation.A found footage appropriation from filmmaker Aristotelis Maragkos, The Timekeepers of Eternity was meticulously crafted by creating a new edit of King’s TV mini-series The Langoliers, printing each frame to paper, then animating it all into a brand new creature feature. But there’s a method to the madness.
In The Langoliers, Mr. Toomey (played by an unhinged Bronson Pinchot) obsessively tears paper to overcome the traumatic events—and literal monsters—of his childhood. In Timekeepers, the tears and creases of photocopied paper transform into a living collage where the filmmaker and protagonist slowly merge with a common goal: to make sense of the paper nightmare.
Saturday 5 November 2022
Film: Häxan (1922)
The Place Theatre @ 8pm
Tickets: Pay what you can from £2
Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen’s legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients.
But the film itself is far from serious– instead, it’s a witches’ brew of the scary, gross, and darkly humorous.
Sunday 6 November 2022
Poetry: Read Poets Society
Eagle Bookshop on St Peter’s Street @
Free tickets (booking appreciated)
This month’s theme is ‘murder most foul’ – from the Gunpowder Plot to Dr Crippen and other malefactors.
Firework displays
Read the full listing at the Explore Bedford blog here.
Monday 7 November 2022
Film: Nitram (15)
Main Theatre, University of Bedfordshire, Polhilll Avenue @ 7.30pm
Tickets: Season membership £69/day membership £5/free parking
Nitram (Caleb Landry-Jones) lives with his mother (Judy Davis) and father (Anthony LaPaglia) in suburban Australia in the Mid 1990s. He lives a life of isolation and frustration at never being able to fit in.
That is until he unexpectedly finds a close friend in a reclusive heiress, Helen (Essie Davis). However when that friendship meets its tragic end, and Nitram’s loneliness and anger grow, he begins a slow descent into a nightmare that culminates in the most nihilistic and heinous of acts.
Tuesday 8 November to Saturday 12 November 2022
Community Theatre: The Deep Blue Sea
The Place Theatre @ 7.30pm each evening
Tickets: from £8
1952.
Thursday 10 November 2022
Comedy: Jack Carroll: Walking Funny
The Quarry Theatre @ 7.30pm
Tickets: £12
Four-year old Jack Carroll (now age 23) took ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ audiences, the judges and the public by storm on the seventh series where he became overall runner-up with his stand-up routine poking fun at his own disability.
On walking onto the stage with the help of his infamous frame, he was asked to introduce himself to which he replied to the panel, “I’m a professional gymnast!” and gained a roaring laugh from all in the room.
Since his appearance on the popular TV show, Jack has gone from strength to strength breaking the taboos around the subject of disability, refreshingly opening up the conversation with his edgy humour.
Enjoy a hilarious, and hysterical evening of entertainment, experiencing the lighter side of Jack Carroll’s observations on life coping with Cerebral Palsy in the modern world.‘Walking Funny’ is a much needed funny, warm and carefree evening spent during these exceedingly difficult Covid times.
Saturday 12 November 2022
Live music: Mad Mods and Englishmen
Bedford Esquires @ 8pm
Tickets: £10
The band will be playing two sets with no support on the night, doors open at 8pm with the band hitting the stage around 8.30pm.
Sunday 13 November 2022
Children’s Theatre: Rise and Fall
The Place Theatre @ 11am and 2pm
Tickets: from £5
Sunday 13 November 2022
Shopping: Bedford Flea, Affordable Art and Local Produce market
Harpur Square @ 10am
It’s Flea-mas in Bedford on Sunday 13 November, with a bumper market featuring unique flea finds, gorgeous affordable art and delicious local produce. The perfect place to do your Christmas shopping!
Sunday 13 November 2022
Live music: Roadhouse play the Sunday Afternoon Session
Bedford Esquires @ 5pm – 8pm
Free entry
Esquires welcomes Roadhouse back to the Sunday Afternoon Session.
Until January 2023
Exhibition: Edward Bawden: Artist Plantsman
Higgins Bedford
Free entry but timed tickets required
Every day, influential British artist and designer, Edward Bawden, would spend an hour in his garden at his home in Great Bardfield before starting work in his art studio. Plants and gardens were one of the most prominent and constant subjects of not only his work but also his life.
Drawn exclusively from the Edward Bawden archive, explore Bawden’s lifelong love of plants and gardens through a wide range of his work, including early wallpaper designs, well-known prints, advertising campaigns and private commissions.
From the grand gardens of Carthage and the botanical gardens at Kew, to Bawden’s own gardens at his parent’s home in Braintree and his beloved one-acre plot in Great Bardfield, discover Bawden’s passion for plants and gardens across decades of his work, featuring pieces that have never before been on public display.
Until April 2023
Some of the most well-loved British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries feature in a new exhibition at the Higgins Bedford on Castle Lane this autumn.
From Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and Paul Nash to Elisabeth Frink, David Hockney and Lucian Freud, the exhibition brings together some of the biggest names in British art, and explores its history since the 20th century.
Changing Times: A Century of Modern British Art is the first large-scale exhibition since the post-pandemic reopening of The Higgins Bedford.
Read more: David Hockney and Lucian Freud shine in new Higgins autumn exhibition
Theatre highlights by Paula Walker
