British actor Nicholas Rowe is currently part of the brilliant cast appearing in Rupert Goold‘s popular production KING CHARLES III at London’s Wyndham Theatre.
Mike Bartlett’s play imagines what might happen if the Queen dies and the Prince of Wales becomes King, written mostly in blank verse.
Charles Spencer in The Telegraph describes it as the “most spectacular, gripping and wickedly entertaining piece of ‘lese-majeste’ that British theatre has ever seen.”
Nicholas plays the wily and deeply devious Leader of the Opposition who suggests to Charles that he refuse his Royal consent to a privacy law imposing restrictions on the media.
Since he came to prominence as a nineteen year old in Steven Spielberg’s production of YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES, Nicholas has carved out a versatile career on both stage and screen, including LOCK,STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS, DA VINCI’S DEMONS, MIDSOMER MURDERS, HOTEL BABYLON and HAMLET.
I was waiting at the Wyndham’s stage door which is located on a very busy alley-way, next to the Leicester Square tube station. It was the first saturday of the new year, approaching 2 pm, so the pre-matinée rush was on. However it was easy to pick Nicholas out from the crowd because of his height and distinctive looks and the fact he was casually strolling towards the stage door, albeit slowly as he stopped to chat to people. He was very friendly as we discussed all manner of things from politics to future projects as he happily signed my sketch before heading in to do his bit for the constitutional crisis.
I kept meaning to catch up with musical theatre icon Bonnie Langford and finally I did so over the weekend after a matinée performance of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at London’s Savoy Theatre.
Bonnie plays the glamorous divorcée Muriel Enbanks and signed this sketch of her as the Lady of the Lake from Spamalot.
Ever since winning the talent show Opportunity Knocks as a six year old and taking to the stage a year later in Gone With The Wind, Bonnie has been a crowd favourite. She has played all the big shows – Cats, Me and My Girl and the role of Roxy Hart in Chicago on both the West End and Broadway stages.
She began playing The Lady of the Lake in the UK tour in early 2012 before a three month run at the Harold Pinter Theatre (formerly The Comedy Theatre) later in 2012, then two stints at the Playhouse Theatre in May-November 2013 and February-March 2014.
Isn’t that Sue Ellen from Dallas??? Oh, no it isn’t. Oh, yes it is! Well, it is Linda Gray who played JR Ewing’s long-suffering drunken wife in the cult TV series Dallas making her panto debut in Cinderella at London’s New Wimbledon Theatre. Although it’s not Linda’s first appearance on the London stage, it is her first in the British festive tradition. She was encouraged by Patrick Duffy, aka Bobby Ewing, Dallas‘s other surviving star, who played Baron Hardup (Cinderella’s father) in London and told her, “you’ve got to do it!” Linda mixes a touch of the Texan with the familiar fairy tale, playing the stetson-toting, hip flask swigging Fairy Godmother who helps Cinders get to the ball. Her stage credits included the role of Mrs Robinson in The Graduate on both the West End and Broadway stages in the early 2000’s. And here’s a piece of trivia: it’s Linda’s uncredited leg in the iconic 1967 poster for The Graduate film. Her anonymous stocking-clad stem stood in for the film’s star Anne Bancroft at $25 a leg. Cinderella continues at the New Wimbledon Theatre until 11 January 2015.
Mike Bartlett’s audacious new play, King Charles III about the ascension of Prince Charles to the throne after Elizabeth II passes on, resulting in a constitutional crisis, royal family meltdown and ultimately a British coup. It is also a bold play, written as a Shakespearean piece in iambic pentameter. It made its world premiere at the Almeida Theatre, London in April 2014 before transferring to Wyndham’s in the West End until March this year.
Amongst the faultless cast assembled by director Rupert Goold are Olivier nominated Margot Leicester and singer/songwriter Katie Brayben.
Writing in The Telegraph, Dominic Cavendish stated, “the cast are uniformly excellent. There’s a 24 carat contribution from Margot Leicester as a funny, fawning but unmistakably feisty Camilla”. Katie plays the stalking, black veiled ghost of Princess Diana. She will soon be seen playing the legendary Carole King in the Broadway hit musical Beautiful at the Aldwych next month.
Both Katie and Margot signed their respective sketches at the stage door after a Saturday evening performance before Christmas.
The Tangram Theatre Company’s brand new take on Yevgeny Schwartz’s brilliantly funny 1943 critique of Stalinist Russia, The Dragon, is currently running at the Southwark Playhouse in London.
Led by their award winning director Daniel Goldman, their productions are described as, “joyous, exciting, messy, chaotic, irreverent, intelligent, silly, fun and surprising”. The Dragon is all of these things and more. It’s an anti-panto and wicked allegory lampooning the soviet bloc. Daniel likens it to, “The Princess Bride meets Captain America and Animal Farm“.
Adapted by Daniel and his company, who form an impressive ensemble cast that includes Anthony Best, Hannah Boyde, Justin Butcher, Jo Hartland, James Marshall, James Rowland, Peter Stickney, Stella Tyalor, Rob Witconb and Charlotte Workman. They cover all the (un)usual suspects required for this fairy tail – Lancelot, the Knight-errant and cut price superhero; a narrating feline, a pretty and innocent in-and-out-of-distress damsel, her always distressed mother, a mad mayor-cum-diabolical-dictator, his sleazy intelligence-challenged son, visiting strangers bearing gifts, a cow…. oh, yes and a three headed dragon.
I was introduced to the term ‘samizdat satire’ by one reviewer. It’s the romanticisation of a soviet form of dissident activity and the practice of evading officially imposed censorship, which was certainly the environment in which the Russian-Jewish playwright wrote this piece.
The Dragon ends on 10 January 2015.
The independent Tangram Theatre Company has taken up residency at the Southwark Playhouse over the Festive Season with two must see productions, both directed by Daniel Goldman.
The first offering is the award-winning Albert Einstein Relativitively Speaking, the part history lesson, part musical comedy, written and performed by John Hinton and accompanied by Jo Eagle.
The Times simply called it, “something close to brilliance”.
Albert Einstein, the eccentric theoretical physicist with “the übercoolest moustache in science” delivers a lecture that includes a couple of wives, his mum, two theories of relativity, two world wars, quantum leaps and two very big bombs.
One of the highlights is a hip hop number by guest rapper MC Squared – wunderbar! It runs until 3 January 2015.
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