Friday 20th September 7:30

All Is True – Kenneth Branagh and Ben Elton’s poignant Bard biopic

The year is 1613, and Shakespeare is acknowledged as the greatest writer of the age. But disaster strikes when his renowned Globe Theatre burns to the ground. Devastated, Shakespeare returns to Stratford, where he must face a troubled past and a neglected family. Haunted by the death of his only son, Hamnet, he struggles to mend the broken relationship with his wife and daughters. In so doing, he is ruthlessly forced to examine his own failings as a husband and father.

4½* ˜ (Guardian)

Ben Elton has written a sweet-natured, melancholy film about the retirement years of someone he’s lately been turning into his specialist subject: William Shakespeare. The great poet is played here with genial sympathy by the film’s director, Kenneth Branagh, sporting a pretty outrageous false nose.  Judi Dench is his wife Anne Hathaway, wearied into resilient impassivity by grief, the unfairness of life and an awful secret. Ian McKellen has a colossal, emphatically wigged cameo as the ageing Earl of Southampton.

All Is True is sentimental, theatrical, likable – and unfashionable.

Admission price is £5 for adults, £4 concessions

Doors open 7.00; buy your tickets at the door or in advance at Harrold Post Office