Drawing: Pippa Nixon in Thérèse Raquin and King John

Posted on August 19, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Over the past seven years English actress Pippa Nixon has taken on a mixture of critically acclaimed stage roles in both contemporary and classical writing. Her three year residency at the Royal Shakespeare Company saw Pippa play many leading roles. In 2012 she worked with Maria Aberg in a production of Shakespeare’s King John where she played a female bastard, the illegitimate offspring of Richard I. It was a part that earned her many stars. Simon Taverner said, :Outstanding – no other word for it.”

Pippa has just completed a short season of Thérèse Raquin at the Theare Royal in bath, Michael Billington said in The Guardian, “Pippa Nixon is destined for stardom… Her great gift is the ability to act with every inch of her body.”

Drawing: Luisa Omielan in What Would Beyonce Do

Posted on August 18, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Luisa Omielan is a fresh and frank new female comic, in fact the Telegraph called her “Fresh, frank and fearless – a gutsy new star is born!” Vogue used the other ‘f’ words, “so fresh, so funny, so original prepare for a full on rearrangement of your insides.”

She scored a sleeper hit with What Would Beyonce Do?, which completed a sell-out, twice extended Edinburgh Festival Fringe run and four sell out shows at London’s Soho Theatre in 2012.

WhatsOnStage said, “uplifting, intense and fearless… The Queen B of comedy.”

Her follow up is Am I Right, Ladies? which she performed at the Soho before taking it to the Edinburgh festival where she is currently in residence at the Laughing Horse @ the Counting House until the end of this week, playing once again to packed houses. She will be returning to the Soho in September, so Londoneres, watch out!

Drawing: Eve Best and Clive Wood in Antony and Cleopatra at Shakespeare’s Globe

Posted on August 16, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

The season of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is into its final week at the Globe in London, with Olivier award-winning actress Eve Best and RSC veteran Clive Wood in the title roles.

It’s Shakespeare’s greatest exploration of the conflicting claims of sex and power, but its contradictory features make it difficult to put into a single genre. It can be classified as a history play, a tragedy, comedy and a romance! Cleopatra is the Bar’s most complex female role.

The Guardian’s Michael Billington summed up the performance of the two leads “restlessly sensual, Best is excellent at capturing Cleopatra’s mercurial contradictions… Wood plays Antony as an old ruffian who is seduced by the Alexandrian fleshpots… more at ease with the ragged world of male soldiery… is faintly apprehensive of the quixotic, mood-changing queen.”

Paul Taylor in The Independent reinforces this, “Best is a supreme mistress at working the Globe space, wonderfully unforced audience rapport and brings a terrific impatient energy to Cleopatra’s capricious changes. She even flirts with the groundlings (standing audience members) planting a kiss on one of them. Clive Wood is a natural casting as Antony – a sexy ageing lion torn between two worlds, who vacillates between duty and pleasure.”

Drawing: Rick Stein

Posted on August 15, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Combining two of my vices – drawing and watching cooking programmes on TV – I decided to draw a few of my favourite celebrity chefs. Rick Stein was the first. I sent this sketch to him at his flagship, The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow on the northern Cornish Coast and he sent it back quicker than you could boil a lobster.

He’s been on our TV screens for the past two decades with that happy laid-back demeanour. He also sells seafood by the seashore, and more. His empire includes The Seafood Restaurant, S Petroc’s Bistro, Rick Stein’s Café, Stein’s Fish & Chips, a cookery school, accommodation, a gift shop, a deli, a patisserie, a fishmongers and The Cornish Arms pub in nearby St Merryn… and no Rick Stein at Bannisters in Mollymook in NSW, Australia.

Rick has to be credited for single-handedly reviving the British seafood industry. Padstow is now a popular tourist destination. His impact on the local econmy has led some to call the once sleepy Cornish fishing village ‘Padstein’.

Drawing: Fiona Shaw in The Testament of Mary at The Barbican

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

The Testament of Mary is a controversial play by Colm Tóbin based on his 2012 Man Booker Prize shortlisted novella of the same name and the play Testament, which was initially performed at the Dublin Theatre Festival in October 2011. It imagines a new account of Christ, one is which his mother Mary questions her son’s death, his divinity and the followers who called him the son of God.

Its short Broadway run in 2013 had militant Christians on the streets accusing it of blasphemy, though it still garnered three Tony nominations, including Best Play. Tony-nominee and four time Olivier-award-winning actress Fiona Shaw played Mary, directed by long time collaborator and Olivier-winner Deborah Warner. The production had its only UK performances at London’s Barbican, where Deborah is the Associate Director, in May 2014.

The play gives Mary a voice, since she is strangely silent in the Biblical text, in an 80 minute monologue. It powerfully captures the terrible grief of a disenchanted mother who has lost her son, first by fame and then by a terrible public death. One of the most potent moments is when Mary says, “when you say that he redeemed the world I will say it was not worth it, was not worth it.”

The production mesmerised audiences and critics alike on both sides of the Atlantic. The Telegraph’s Charles Spencer summed up the acclaim, “Shaw is magnificent thorughout.”

Drawing: Lucy Briggs-Owen and Tom Bateman in Shakespeare In Love at the Noel Coward Theatre

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

“I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all.”

After six weeks of rehearsals and three weeks of previews, Shakespeare In Love opened at the Noel Coward Theatre in London last month, sixteen years after the original film version.

Featuring a company of 28 actors and musicians, this sweeping rom-com, based on the Oscar winning screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, has been adapted for the stage by Lee Hall, directed Declan Donnellan.

Shakespeare in forbidden love summarises the tale of a promising new playwright, Will (Tom Bateman), short of cash with writer’s block and in desperate need of a new hit, finding his muse in passionate young noble woman Viola De Lesseps (Lucy Briggs-Owen) who inspires him to write Romeo and Juliet.

The play within a play (with music) opened to excellent reviews and is booking through to 25 October this year. There’s also a dog named Barney. He sometimes steals the show.

RIP Robin Williams

Posted on August 12, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Today I woke up to the sad news that Robin Williams had passed away. I was lucky enough to meet him a few times and he was always kind and obliging with autographs and photos for fans.

So, instead of posting one of my drawings today, I’ve decided to post one of his. Here’s Robin Williams’ sketch of Einstein’s Theory of Relatives, a quick doodle for a collection of celebrity drawings I compiled for a book for Koru Care, a children’s charity in New Zealand.

Drawing, Gina McKee in Richard III at Trafalgar Studios

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

BAFTA winning British actress Gina McKee is currently starring opposite Martin Freeman in Richard III at London’s Trafalgar Studios. She made her Hampstead Theatre debut in early 2013 playing Viv alongside Anna Maxwell Martin and Tamzin Outhwaite in Amelia Bullmore’s comedy Di and Viv and Rose. It dealt with the vagaries of friendship among a group of co-habitating women – three students at a northern university in the early 1980s.

In 2010 she appeared as Goneril in King Lear at the Donmar Warehouse with Derek Jacobi and directed by Michael Grandage. She received an Olivier nomination for her performance.

This year she reunited with director Jamie Lloyd to play Queen Elizabeth in Richard III at the Trafalgar Studios, whre she signed my sketch this week. The play runs until 27 September 2014.

Drawing: Cherie Lunghi in The Importance of Being Earnest

Posted on August 9, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

British actress Cherie Lunghi is currently appearing in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End. In one of her biographical blurbs, Cherie was described as a ‘leading ingénue’ at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late 70s. An ingénue is a stock character, typically beautiful, gentle, sweet, virginal and often naive – the usual foil to a vamp or a femme fatale. Her roles at the RSC included Perdita, Cordelia and Viola.

She then left to play Guinevere (probably more of a vamp) in John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981) and pursue a film and TV career.

At the Pinter she plays the conventional Victorian woman, Gwendolen Fairfax – Lady Bracknell’s sophisticated, intellectual, cosmopolitan and utterly pretentious daughter who is in love with Wilde’s protagonist, Jack, whom she knows as Earnest. It’s a name she is fixated upon and will not marry a man without that moniker that “inspires absolute confidence”. Ingénue or vamp? Or maybe a mixture of both. Either way, in real life she was most fun to meet and chatted with a handful of us at the stage door before Saturday’s matinée. I told her that sketching was one of my vices, and she said “it’s a vice you’re good at”.

Drawing: Sian Phillips in The Importance of Being Earnest at The Harold Pinter Theatre

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

The ageless Siân Phillips made her Shakespeare Theatre Company debut as Oscar Wilde’s ‘dragon of propriety’ in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Lansburgh Theatre in Washington this year. It’s a role she is currently playing at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End. Well, in reality she plays a member of the amateur Burbury Company of Players rehearsing the role of Lady Bracknell.

She made her first appearance on the London stage in 1957 as a student, appearing in Hermann Sudermann’s Magda for RADA to critical acclaim. It provided the launching pad for her long and distinguished career, which has included Oliver and Tony nominations and a TV BAFTA win for Best Actress in I Claudius and How Green Was My Valley.

In his review for the Express, Neil Norman states, “Phillips is one of the Lady Bracknells I have ever seen, skirting caricature without embracing it, she encapsulates the low venality of the high born.

I based the drawing on one of Scott Suchman’s numerous publicity stills for the Washington Production. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one of Siân’s favourite shots.

“Oh, that’s from that bad photo of me.” I picked it because of the ‘expression’ which I though really captured the character – my explanation offered in mitigation and hope. But she was good humoured about it and signed and dedicated it for me on her way into last Saturday’s matinée.