Monthly Archives: August 2015

Drawing: Stephen Merchant and Steffan Rhodri in The Mentalists

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the mentalists

“The oddest of odd couple comedy”, is how Richard Bean’s The Mentalists is described by a number of critics. “It’s a sympathetic understanding of the darker recesses of the human heart,” wrote Charles Spencer in the Mail.  The play revolves around Ted and Morrie, two men holed up in a budget hotel in Finsbury Park, making an apocalyptic video. Premiering in 2002 at the National, it was revived last month at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre, directed by Abbey Wright, with Steffan Rhodri as  Morrie and making his ‘impressive’ (The Independent) West End debut, Stephen Merchant as Ted. ‘Very Funny’, said TimeOut and Paul Taylor commented on the “fine Merchant-Rhodri chemistry”, in The Independent, so catch it before it finishes on 29 August!

I did a couple of sketches-one with Stephen, which he signed earlier in the run and one of the ‘oddest of odd couples’, which I got graphed over the weekend. So now I have an odd couple of drawings. 

Drawing: Dame Evelyn Glennie – Percussion Legend

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evelyn glennie

Grammy-winning Scottish musician Dame Evelyn Glennie is considered the world’s permier solo percussionist. Her eclectic range of styles has been described as ‘exquisite, unique and equal to a musical feast.’ This year she was awarded the Polar Music Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, known as the ‘Nobel Prize of Music’ in that country. The reason her 30 year career was honoured was because “Evelyn Glennie shows us that the body is a resonance chamber and that we live in a universe of sound.”

To put this into context, Dame Evelyn has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12. This has not inhibited her ability to perform. She regularly plays barefoot during her performances and studio sessions to ‘feel the music’ better and has taught herself to hear with parts of her body other than her ears. Her company’s motto is ‘Teach the World to Listen’ and she published  Hearing Lesson to discuss her condition in response to inaccurate reporting in the media. In 2012 Dame Evelyn collaborated with Underworld on the soundtrack to the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympic Games and performed live in the stadium.

The percussion legend returned to Proms this month with a lunchtime concert at London’s Cadogan Hall to celebrate her 50th birthday with a mesmerising musical party. I sent her this montage sketch to celebrate the occasion, which she signed.

Drawing: Joe Armstrong and Louise Brealey in Constellations

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Constellations

After premiering at the Royal Court Theatre in 2012, Nick Payne’s double-hander Constellations transferred to the Duke of York’s  in the West End, then onto Broadway before returning to London after a short UK tour to the Trafalgar Studios for a four-week run last month.

Described as ‘a singular love story with infinite possibilities’,  Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins played the original Roland and Marianne, the couple whose relationship is explored alongside the quantum multiverse theory. Jake Gyllenhaal made his Broadway debut with Ruth Wilson when the play moved to New York’s Manhatten Theatre Club in January 2013. The latest production featured Joe Armstrong and Louise Brealey taking to the stage, memorable for the glowing cluster of white balloons, which evoke, in the words of designer Tom Scutt, “synapses in the brain and atoms and sperm and weddings and parties..”…probably endless possibilities…like the play.

Louise sensibly walked to work on the Saturday when central London was gridlocked by a bike-mobilisation day so she arrived at the Trafalgar Studios with plenty of time to chat and sign my sketch. Joe biked…an unwilling participant in the RideLondon campaign, arriving late and dripping with perspiration. But he took the time to sign and christen my sketch with ink and a few drops of sweat.

Both Joe and Louise will appear in Husbands & Sons at the National’s Dorfman Theatre in October.

Drawing: Ralph Fiennes and Elisabeth Hopper in The Tempest

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The Tempest

Twenty-three year old newcomer Elisabeth Hopper’s big breakthrough came with her role as Miranda the teenage castaway in Trevor Nunn‘s hit London production of Shakepeare’s last play The Tempest opposite one of her idols, Ralph Fiennes, as her father Prospero at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in late 2011.

She made her stage debut earlier as a courtier in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, also directed by Sir Trevor at the same theatre.

Only two years prior to that Elisabeth was studying English and Drama at Manchester University, and described working with Ralph as “one of the things that dreams are made of,” to echo a line from the play.

In her audition, she performed one of Juliet’s speeches from Romeo and Juliet which Sir Trevor said was “as stunningly original and unexpected as I have ever come across.”

The production caused a bit of a storm at the box office with £1million advance tickets sales due to Ralph’s headlining appearance. “The combination of Ralph and Sir Trevor is a magical recipe” said co-producer Arnold Crook.

And it was a bit of a stormy opening night when I contemplated getting this sketch of Elisabeth and Ralph signed at the stage door. The lack of cover and positioning of the exit in a cul-de-sac creates its own ‘weather vortex’.

The Times critic Libby Purves even referred to the seasonal squall as the “first equinoctial gales swept London – a classic Tempest on and off the stage”.

Not an environment conjusive to signing. I left the drawing at the stage door, which both them signed and returned to me.

Drawing: Antony Sher and Tara Fitzgerald in Broken Glass

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Broken Glass

“Arthur Miller’s 1994 play towers over the dismal lowlands of current West End theatre like a majestic mountain peak.” wrote The Guardian’s Michael Billington in his five-star review of Broken Glass. Pretty impressive stuff from one of Britain’s leading critics.

The play focuses on Phillip and Sylvia Gellburg, a Jewish couple living in 1938 New York whose lives are affected by the anti-Semitic events of Kristallnacht (The night of Broken Glass) in Nazi Germany. Sylvia becomes paralysed from the waist down, a condition her doctor believes is psychosomatic and treats it as such. But what was the cause and who is the real cripple?

Originally staged in London at the National in 1994, this revival began at the Tricycle Theatre, a small fringe venue in Kilburn in late 2010. It returned for a month run in August the following year before transferring to the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End in September for a four month season. An excellent cast was headed by Antony Sher and Tara Fitzgerald in the lead roles. “Sher gives a superb performance of crippling anxiety…Fitzgerald brings a potent mixture of warmth,sensuality and grief,” wrote Charles Spencer of their performances in the Daily Telegraph. Both signed my sketch in person on a chilly winter’s evening at the stage door.

Drawing: Richard Herring in Christ on a Bike and Hitler Moustache

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richard herring

“It’s just not for me,” said comedian,writer,blogger and podcaster Richard Herring when he decided not to join the annual mass exodus of comics from London the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Described as “one of the leading hidden masters of modern British Comedy” and dubbed the ‘King of Edinburgh’,performing at 28 of the last Festivals, he has decided to ‘boycott’ it and perform a series of 12 shows at London’s Leicester Square Theatre this month. He told The Independent that the globe’s biggest fringe festival  had “changed so much that it’s unmanageable, exhausting and expensive.” Last year 49,497 artists performed at the event. “It’s overcrowded and over-priced,” he said.

Edinburgh’s loss is our gain. Included in Richard’s dozen at Leicester Square are his classics-Christ On A Bike and Hitler Moustache, ending with the premiere of his new hour-long show Happy Now. Running a little late for Saturday evenings performance of Talking Cock, I managed to grab Richard before he quickly slipped inside, equally quickly scribbling a dedication and his economical sig, saying “Sorry I need to be quick…good,” which could relate to the speed of the task or possibly the sketch.

 

Drawing: Susie Lindeman in Vivien:Letter to Larry

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letter for larry

Hundreds of letters were exchanged between Laurence Olivier and his second wife, Vivien Leigh from their steamy adulterous beginnings in 1936 to the final years of indifference. They documented  one of the great love stories of the 20th Century. However in 1960 one letter from Larry to Vivien, while she was starring in Duel Of Angels on Broadway, asked her for a divorce. Her response created a world-wide sensation and the subject for award-winning playwright Donald Macdonald’s Viven:Letter To Larry, which is currently playing at London’s Jermyn Street Theatre in its first full West End run. Australian actress Susie Lindeman portrays the screen legend following a critically-acclaimed Paris premiere season with Reg ARTS Paris stating,”Tour de force. Exquisitely written. Lindeman holds the audience in suspense. An interpretation of genius.” It’s the second time Susie has presented the play at Jermyn Street, staging a special performance for the centennary of Leigh’s birth in November 2013.

I meet the personable Susie going into the Jermyn Street Theatre for last Saturday’s matinee and she signed this sketch of her in the role.

Drawing: Michele Dotrice in The Importance of Being Earnest

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michele dotrice

I had the good fortune to walk on the (Oscar) Wilde side on Saturday after detouring from The Elephant Man across to Covent Garden to the Vaudeville Theatre’s stage door on my post-matinee meandering, where The Importance of Being Earnest is currently playing. I was after a romantic, repressed spinster in love with a village preacher – Miss Laetitia Prism…well not the character, but the actress playing  Mr. W’s parody for ‘a woman with a past’, the delightful Michele Dotrice. As Alexandra Coghlan wrote in The Arts Desk, “The unexpected heroes of the night are Michele Dotrice and Richard O’Callaghan as ageing lovers Miss Prism and Dr Chasuble. Quivering with girlish passion, Dotrice balances comedy with a startling pathos in her ‘female of repellent aspect’.”

Michele has a long and distinguished stage career, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company at the age of sixteen, but she is probably known more to global audiences as Betty,the long-suffering wife of ‘Oh Frank!’ Spencer (Michael Crawford) in the BBC series Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em. Forty years on the show still attracts tens of thousands of hits each day on YouTube.

Michele left her character on the stage and slipped out the door to have a bite to eat before going back for a sold-out evening performance. With a line from Miss Prism’s dialogue in mind, “I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moments notice”, I disrupted her journey and asked if she could sign my sketch, which she did ‘with pleasure’ and my trusty black Pentel fine point pen. She must have had that same line in her mind, using the ‘good’ word, for the drawing, not necessarily the drawer.

 

Drawing: The Elephant Man at Theatre Royal Haymarket

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the elephant man

The Tony-nominated Broadway production of Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man with Bradley Cooper, Alessandro Nivola and Patricia Clarkson ended its three-month West End run at London’s Theatre Royal, Haymarket on Saturday.

Based on the real life of the severely deformed Joseph Merrick (Bradley), it tells the story of renowned physician Frederick Treves ( Alessandro) who rescues him from a travelling freak show to live his short life in the safe and secure environs of a London hospital.  While there he becomes friends with the beautiful actress Mrs kendal (Patricia) who is deeply touched by his pure and genuine soul.

I had drawn individual sketches of all three leads, which they signed for me in the opening week. I also did this composite sketch of them, which I wasn’t going to bother getting signed…but at the last minute, well the final day, I thought, why not? There are essentially three chances to catch the cast on a Saturday-going in,coming out after the matinee, coming out after the evening performance. Technically four, if you count them returning from the matinee exit. Right, that sorted, I aimed for after the matinee. Only Alessandro appeared and, as usual was extremely charming and complimentary about the drawing and signed. I asked him what he was doing next, he said a film with Robert De Niro…”A bit of a come down then?,” I quipped…a questionable attempt at humour. He laughed! Such a polite man. The very efficient stage manager let the crowd know that Bradley and Patricia would not be coming out, so that saved waiting time. Since I had one, I was now obliged to get the other two to complete the task. When I returned after the final performance, the barriers were packed, six deep, which made that task a little more tricky. My many years of stalking experience..I stop short of calling it prowess..enabled me to eventually secure a spot three deep, amongst a number of gushing Bradleybabes, (sorry, I’m not familiar with what a collective of his adoring female public are called ) ready to get selfies…not siggys. The man himself  eventually appeared and as he had done for the entire run ,”did the line’. While the gazillion selfies were being taken he spotted my sketch which I was trying to hold in a strategic position and not get in the way of anyone’s photograph and reached over for it. I asked him to dedicate it ‘To Mark” and he said “got it…thanks”. After he left the throng subsided, so it was much easier to get Patricia, who said she had loved her time in London..oh and the drawing.

Drawing: Anna Chancellor and Nicholas Farrell in South Downs / The Browning Version

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The Browning Version

2011 marked the centenary year of Terence Rattigan’s birth and celebrations of his work swept the UK. One Telegraph critic labelled it, “an outbreak of Rattigan-worship”. Considered one of the most influential dramatists of the 20th century, Sir Terence’s works include The Winslow Boy, The Deep Blue Sea, After The Dance and The Browning Version.

The latter, his one act masterpiece written in 1948, was part of a mouth watering double bill with South Downs, David Hare’s contemporary response, written at the invitation of the Rattigan estate.

Both examine life in a boarding public school and revolve around unexpected acts of kindness, one from the perspective of a pupil and the other from that of a teacher. The Browning Version is based on Rattigan’s classics teacher at Harrow, and Hare wrote South Downs using his days at Lancing College as a backdrop.

Following a sellout run at the Chichester’s Festival Theatre Minerva Stage, it transferred to the West End’s Harold Pinter Theatre in April 2012 for a three month season. Both pieces featured Anna Chancellor and Nicholas Farrell as leads. In South Downs, Anna plays Belinda Duffield and Nicholas is the Rev. Eric Dewley. In The Browning Version, Nicholas plays the despised departing teacher Andrew Crocker-Harris and Anna his unfaithful wife, Millie.

All the mainstream print media gave it no less than four stars. Charles Spencer in The Telegraph wrote “I gave it a rave review and five stars (at Chichester). Seeing it again on its transfer to the West End, it strikes me as an even greater achievement than it did then. If South Downs is a very good play then The Browning Version is an disputably great one. Nicolas Farrell’s performance is extraordinary and there is wonderful support from Anna Chancellor.”

Both Anna and Nicholas signed this montage sketch of both their respective characters at the Pinter stage door in July 2012.

Nicholas actually apologised for the slight variation in his usual autograph, correcting the initial spelling of his Christian name because he was “distracted by looking at the excellent sketch” while signing.