About Mark Winter / Chicane

Cartoonist. Artist. Illustrator. Oh, and autograph hunter.

Sketch: Aaron Tveit in Assassins at the Menier Chocolate Factory

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

American actor and singer Aaron Tveit has just completed his run as John Wilkes Booth, the stage actor who assassinated US President Abraham Lincoln in Stephen Sondheim’s contentious musical Assassins at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London.

This razor sharp revival of the Tony award-winning production is a revue style portrayal of the nine men and women who attempted, successfully or not, to assassinate Presidents of the United States, and is directly Jamie Lloyd.

In 2012 Aaron played Enjolras, leader of the student revolutionary group in the film adaption of Les Miserables. He performed with the cast at the 85th Academy Awards the following year. He also stars as undercover FBI Special Agent Mike Warren in the USA Network series Graceland which premiered in the summer of 2013.

I managed to catch up with Aaron as he whizzed past me after his penultimate performance at last Saturday’s matinee. Obviously when fleeing the theatre after killling the most powerful man in the world, one does not linger… but he did long enough to sign my sketch of him in character and engage in a brief chat about his future work.

The show without Aaron finishes on the 7 March 2015.

Sketch: Maxine Peake in Hamlet

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre’s gender-bending 2014 production of Hamlet featuring the impressive Maxine Peake in the title role will be hitting the big screen soon.

Filmed over three nights, the sell out radical re-imagining of the Bard’s number one work will hit an estimate 200 cinemas in the UK next month.

The demand for tickets was so great, that the season was extended and became the theatre’s fastest selling show in a decade with over 75.000 people seeing it. Maxine can also currently be seen in the award-winning Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything.

“Peake’s gender ambiguous portrayal fascinatingly amplifies that element of the text,” The New Statesman’s Mark Lawson said.

Maxine is the Associate Artist at the Royal Exchange – a venue she has been with since her childhood and was a member of its Youth Theatre. Maxine is also a familiar face to small screen viewers. She was nominated for a BAFTA for her roles in the BBC One’s The Village and Handcock and Joan and also starred in the legal drama Silk, Shameless and as Myra Hindley in See No Evil.

I waited at the Royal Court Theatre stage door on a chilly Friday evening last week to meet Maxine in person, after a performance of How To Hold Your Breath. It was worth the wait. Maxine was a really nice person and kindly signed and dedicated my sketch. I asked her if she will be staging Hamlet in London. She said “nobody wants it. ” I’m sure that will change…

Sketch: James McAvoy in The Ruling Class at Trafalgar Studios

Posted on February 9, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

BAFTA wining actor James McAvoy returns to London’s Trafalgar Studios in the madcap revival of Peter Barne’s zany 1968 black comedy The Ruling Class, directed by Jamie Lloyd. It closes the second season of ‘Trafalgar Transformed’ at the Whitehall venue.

It’s an attack on the establishment in all its forms – aristocracy, public school, the church, the military. James plays Jack, the 14th Earl of Gurney and the dodgy offspring of a toff who inherits a peerage when his father topped himself while playing a sex-hanging game in a tutu.

Jack is a paranoid schizophrenic who believes he is Jesus Christ after an epiphany at a public urinal in East Acton.

“How do you know you are God?” he is asked.

“Simple” he replies. “When I pray to him, I find I am talking to myself.”

However, the mock messiah’s family scheme against him so he has to prove some sanity to keep the inheritance, fitting in with his peers to become the “right sort of mad”.

The Guardian’s Susannah Clapp describes James’ performance as “eel-like protean, with a mephistophelean charm” (note to readers, Mephistopheles was a demon in German folklore). “He’s just fascinating, brilliantly weird,” said Time Out.

The Ruling Class runs until 11 April 2015.

Sketch: Adam James, Eleanor Matsuura, Neil Stuke and Sam Troughton in Bull at The Young Vic Theatre

Posted on February 7, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Director Clare Lizzimore’s brutish production of Mike Bartlett’s 55 minute ‘study’ of office bullying entitled Bull is currently concluding its short run at London’s Young Vic.

Described but The Guardian as, “nasty and brutish,” the play is staged in the intimate Maria space, offering ringside seats (which are completely sold out!) as three employees – Isobel (Eleanor Matsuura), Tony (Adam James) and Thomas (Sam Troughton) fight to keep their jobs and avoid boss Carter’s (Neil Stuke) sword.

Isobel and Tony combine to make sure Thomas is the sacrifice as the playwright plots the destruction with, “the studied, elegant technique of a matador haunting a bull,” according to Laura Barrett in The Telegraph.

Originally staged in the Crucible’s studio space in Sheffield, it then enjoyed a run off Broadway before making its London debut, which has been extended until 14 February 2015.

The brilliant cast all signed my montage sketch after the mid week matinée this week.

Drawing: Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl

Posted on February 6, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Former Bond Girl Rosamund Pike‘s performance as missing wife Amy Elliott-Dunne in David Fincher’s psychological thriller Gone Girl has garnered a lot of awards attention this year.

The film had its world premiere on the opening night of the 52nd New York Film Festival on 26 September 2014, to both critical and commercial acclaim.

Rosamund’s performance was particularly praised. She received Best Actress nominations for the Academy Award, the BAFTA, the Golden Globe and the SAG Awards.

She has already won 16 awards for the role including the Palm Springs International Film Award an the London Film Critics Circle Awards.

Sketch: Dee Caffari

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Dee Caffari

British yachtswoman Dee Caffari MBE is the first woman to have sailed single handed and non-stop around the world in both directions and the only woman to have sailed non-stop around the world three times.

It was in 2006 when she single handedly sailed “the wrong way” – westward, against the prevailing winds and currents. Three years later, Dee complete the Vendée Globe Race and set a new record to become the first woman to sail solo, non-stop around the globe in both directions.

In the same year (2009) she set a new record for circumnavigating Britain and Ireland after crossing the Solent finish line on her Open 60 Aviva having beaten the existing record by 17 hours.

For the full details of her amazing nautical feats you can read Dee’s autobiography Against the Flow.

Sketch: Zrinka Cvitešić in Once

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Thirty five year old Croatian actress Zrinka Cvitešić made her West End debut at the Phoenix Theatre as ‘Girl’ in the hit musical Once, receiving rave reviews and winning the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

She has also won a handful of awards for her celluloid work and a regular at the National Theatre of her native Croatia. I managed to meet Zrinka at the Royal Opera House stage door as she emerged, all glommed up to walk the red carpet at last year’s Oliviers and sh was very happy to sign it – even before she won!

Drawing: Sally Hawkins in Mrs Warren’s Profession on Broadway

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Golden Globe winner, Academy Award and BAFTA nominee Sally Hawkins made her Broadway debut in Doug Hughes’ revival of George Bernard Shaw’s controversial 1894 work Mrs Warren’s Profession at the American Airlines Theatre in the Autumn of 2010.

She portrayed Vivie, the daughter of Kitty Warren (Cherry Jones) the title character and ‘madam’ who rises out of the gutter to run a brain of brothels. Vivie was kept separate and ignorant of her mother’s world… until now.

The play was considered so shocking that it wasn’t performed in London until 1902 and then, only privately. It premiered on Broadway in 1905 at the Garrick Theatre and subsequently was revived in 1907, 1918, 1922 and 1976.

Sally signed this black biro sketch I drew of her and Cherry (who I unfortunately missed, but on my ‘wanted’ list) when she arrived back in the UK after the New York season ended.

Sketch: Beatriz Stix-Brunell, Ballerina

Posted on January 31, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

American dancer Beatriz Stix-Brunell is a soloist at the Royal Ballet in London, but her high profile career path did not follow the predictable school-to-company route.

Beatriz grew up in New York city and began her training at the School of American Ballet. At 12 she auditioned for the Paris Opera Ballet School, being one of the “petits rats” for a year and ranked top of her class. After that she returned to New York and learnt privately with Fabrice Herrault.

British contemporary ballet choreographer Christopher Wheeldon put Beatrix on the professional map when she joined his company Morphoses when she was just 14. In 2010 he resigned and is now Artistic Associate at the Royal Ballet, where Beatrix joined as an Artist also in 2010. He premiered a full length ballet Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 2011 – the first at the Royal for over 20 years. Alice, the original protagonist in Lewis Carroll’s novel is a child, in the ballet, however, she is a teenager beginning her first romance.

She performed a principal role for the first time when she stepped in to play Alice, at the last minute after a principal was injured last season. She revived the role this season which complete a sell out run this month.

Beatriz signed this sketch of her as Alice at the Royal Opera House this week.

Sketch: Yuhui Choe, Ballerina

Posted on January 30, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Popular Japanese-born Korean dancer Yuhui Choe is a First Soloist at the Royal Ballet in London.

She studied at ballet school in Japan from age 5-14 then won a Prix de Lausanne Apprenticeship in Paris before joining the Company as an Artist in 2003. She was promoted to First Artist in 2006 and First Soloist in 2008 dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker and created one of six female roles in Wayne McGregor’s INFA with music by Max Richter.

The Guardian chose Yuhui as a dancer on their “hotlist” of rising stars to watch in 2009, stating, “She radiates joy in the purest sense”.