About Mark Winter / Chicane

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

Drawing: Ben Hur at the Tricycle Theatre

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Ben Hur

The William Wyler 1959 blockbuster BEN HUR won 11 Oscars with a cast of thousands, including 10.000 extras, 365 speaking parts, 2,500 horses, a swelling score, the entire Roman Empire, chariot racing, sea battles, a galley of half-naked slaves, glistening torsos, Charlton Heston, did I mention the Roman Empir…oh yes I did. Tim Carroll’s production is a more modest version, not quite the biblical proportions of the original epic, but has kept some elements and a cast of….ur …four. But an excellent one at that.The energetic quartet playing hapless fictional thesps, staging the show are John Hopkins, Ben Jones, Richard Durden and Alix Dunmore who endlessly recycle themselves into various characters.

I remember seeing John in the ‘superlatively skewered’ Hitchcock spy spoof THE 39 STEPS a few years ago. The hit show, which was described as one of the best things to come out of the West End in the last decade, played London’s Criterion Theatre for nine years, winning multiple awards and is currently on a National Tour.

The very same playwright, Patrick Barlow is responsible for this pocket-sized, ‘redux maximus’ adaption, which began life in 2012 at The Watermill Theatre in Newbury, and has been subject to numerous rewrites since. The latest version is currently being staged at the Tricycle Theatre in North London.

“The thing with bad comedy is that it needs, paradoxically, to be really good indeed to be funny and this is very funny”, declared Jane Shilling in The Telegraph. She says ‘The jokes are signalled from so far off that when they arrive, you greet them like old friends.” Fiona Mountford in the Evening Standard decreed it “a palpable hit.”

I drew this sketch of John, Richard and Alix from the promo poster. It’s probably not right that Ben is missing from a BEN HUR drawing, so I will have to do a separate one and return. I caught up with them after last Saturday’s matinee and got the sketch signed.

It runs until 9 January at the Tricycle, although John said that it may transfer to the West End.

Drawing: Andrew Scott, David Dawson and Joanna Vanderham in The Dazzle

Posted on January 2, 2016 by Mark Winter / Chicane

The Dazzle

The top floor of the derelict Central St Martins School of Art on London’s Charing Cross road is an intriguing space and home to the fledgling theatre venue called Found 111. It’s the site-specific for the UK debut of Tony-winner Richard Greenberg’s THE DAZZLE, the American Gothic story of the real-life Collyer Brothers whose retreat from society to their Fifth Avenue Harlem apartment along with 136 ton of junk including 14 grand pianos.

The reclusive eccentrics and compulsive hoarders made national headlines when their dead bodies were found under sordid, booby-trapped piles of clutter in 1947. Their ‘folie a deux’ has a name – disposophobia – a fear of getting rid of stuff, known as the ‘hoarding disorder’.

SHERLOCK and SPECTRE star, Andrew Scott and LUTHER and RIPPER STREET’s David Dawson play Langley and Homer respectively. They are joined by Joanna Vanderham from TV’s BANISHED, as Milly, the beautiful guest whose arrival throws their lives into sharp focus. Michael Billington from The Guardian described the performances, “Both actors are hypnotic and the exquisite Joanna Vanderham radiates a damaged sensuality.”

The season, which finishes at the end of this month is sold out, but returns are available resulting in a daily queue running the length of the frontage and beyond. It’s also on one of London’s busiest pedestrian routes, so one has to be on one’s guard to get one’s drawing signed by the three cast members going in. This is the reason it took me two days to achieve the three graphs on one’s sketch.

Happy New Year

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New Year 4

Drawing: Jim Broadbent as Scrooge

Posted on December 31, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Jim Broadbent

Jim Broadbent, one of Britain’s finest character actors, has returned to the London stage as the seasonal skinflint Scrooge in a new adaption by Patrick Barlow of Dickens’ classic A CHRISTMAS CAROL at the Noel Coward Theatre.

Last seen in THEATRE OF BLOOD at the National, a decade ago, the multi-award-winning actor’s portrayal of Scrooge is more high-spirited than mean-spirited, played with a ‘permanent twinkle in his eye’.

It’s New Year’s honours time and I was reminded of when Jim declined an OBE in 2002, after winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as British critic and writer John Bayley in IRIS. He stated that there were more deserving recipients than actors and the British Empire was not something he wanted to celebrate. But he didn’t decline to sign my sketch and, as usual was very gracious at the stage door.

Drawing: Sofie Hagen in Bubblewrap

Posted on December 30, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Sofie Hagen’s intro on her website reads, ‘Welcome to my website. If you don’t know me, I’m a Danish stand-up comedian, writer and extraordinarily nice person.’ All true. The 27 year old, Copengagen-born, London-based comic made an impressive debut at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, winning the Best Newcomer Award with BUBBLEWRAP, an engrossing, entertaining and candid romp through her life that had its foundations in a teenage obsession with Irish boy-band Westlife.

It touches on the themes such as body issues, mental health and feminism, that have become de rigueur in contemporary comedy, dragging the once taboo into the mainstream. The Guardian described her as having “an easy charm and an ability to combine delicate subject matter with accessible laughs.” It was early last year that she had her ‘awakening’, where her long-held insecurities faded away and she finally learned to accept what she thought were flaws and love herself for all her quirks. She said she became a happier person and a better comedian. Her epiphany came when a man asked her to urinate on him during sex in the shower. I believe social anthropologists would include Sofie in what they have termed ‘generation overshare’.

This month Sofie bought BUBBLEWRAP to London’s Soho Theatre, where I caught up with the ‘extraordinarily nice person’ after Monday evening’s show. The audience clearly enjoyed it. One woman remarked that she was very brave, dealing with the difficult themes. Dealing with stalking, signature-hunting, scribblers may be added to that list, but since she stated that, “comedy is the one thing that makes sense in her life” I was confident she would see the funny side and happily sign the sketch. I was right.

Drawing: MyAnna Buring and Laura Donnelly in The Wasp

Posted on December 29, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

The Wasp

The Tarantula Hawk is a wasp that lays an egg in a spider’s abdomen, hatching a larvae that feeds on the arachnid’s innards avoiding the vital organs to ensure they remain a living host until it is ready to emerge. It is reference to Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s electric triller THE WASP, which has transferred to the Trafalgar Studio’s intimate 100-seater number 2 space after a sell-out season at the Hampstead Theatre earlier this year.

MyAnna Buring reprises the role of Carla and replacing Sinead Matthews is Laura Donnelly as Heather. Two women who haven’t seen each other since school. The rough Carla is married to a man thirty years her senior and heavily pregnant with her fifth child. Heather is glamorous, successful and happily married. It asks in 90 minutes with two plot twists and a ‘gobsmaking ending’, how far beyond the playground we carry our childhood experiences and how people are willing to go in order to come to terms with them.

“A taunt, brilliantly calibrated two-handed, which takes pleasure in shocking its audience” wrote The Stage’s Natasha Tripney in her four-star review. I met MyAnna and Laura as they emerged from the Trafalgar Studios stage door to an unseasonably mild winter’s evening and both signed my sketch, adding some kind comments.