Theatre Sketch: The Nether

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

The Nether – the future term for the internet, offers complete freedom – a new virtual wonderland providing total sensory immersion in a dystopian future. Los Angeles based dramatist Jennifer Haley’s award-winning play, directed by Jeremy Herrin, transferred to London’s Duke of York’s Theatre for a limited 12 week run after a sold out season at The Royal Court. Charles Spencer wrote his review for the Telegraph, “Stanley Townsend is memorably sinister and devious as the owner of the site… in this haunting and highly original modern fairy tale.”

Award winning Irish actor Stanley Townsend plays Sims, who in the guise of Poppa creates The Hideaway where “guests” can do unspeakable things to a 12 year old avatar named Iris. His acting credits include Whistle Blower, Heartbeat, Jonathan Creek, Ballykissangel, A Touch of Frost, The Bill, Ashes to Ashes and Ripper Street for TV and films In the Name of The Father, Happy Go Lucky and Killing Bono.

Included in The Nether’s four Olivier Award nominations was a Supporting Actress recognition for the four ‘young Iris’s’ – Isabella Pappas, Jaime Adler, Perdita Hibbins, Zoe Brough. Zoe left the production to take up her role as Blousey Brown in Bugsy Malone at the Lyric Hammersmith, but I met the other three at the theatre where they along with Stanley signed my sketch.

Drawing: Brian Jagde

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Brian Jagde

American tenor Brian Jagde made his Royal Opera debut this month as opera’s most notorious love ’em and leave ’em characters, Lieutenant BF Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly. His bio describes him as “one of the most engaging and exciting lirico-spinto tenors of his generation”. Having not encountered such a description, I looked it up. Apparently it is a voice that is versatile enough to sing a lighter or darker, more powerful sound when required.

Brian’s many awards include second prize and the Birgit Nisson Prize at Operalia 2012 and first prize at the 2014 Loren L. Zachary National Vocal Competition.

After missing him at the Royal Opera House, I returned on Saturday morning and swam my way to the stage door, emerging from the Covent Garden tube station to encounter a monsoon, but avoided water damage to the sketch.

The security people didn’t know who Brian was, I said (with charade actions) “tall with bright eyes”. They clicked! It was worth it. Not only did he sign my sketch, but wrote a lovely note wanting to see more of my drawings. I’ll send him another original.

Sketch: Anne Sofie von Otter

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Award-winning Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter’s repertoire encompasses lieder, operas, oratorios and rock and pop songs. Her busy concert career has brought her regularly to the major halls of Europe and North America.

At this year’s Grammy Awards, Anne won for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album with Douce France on Nai’ve Classique. This was her second Grammy, having won in 2004 for Best Classical Vocal Performance. She ahas received numerous nominations.

In 1995 she was appointed Hovsangerska by the King of Sweden which is literally ‘Court Singer’ – a title awarded by the Swedish monarch to a singer who has contributed to the International standing of Swedish singing.

Last month Anne made an anticipated return to the Royal Opera House as Leokadja Begbick in John Fulljames’ new production of The Rise and Fall of The City of Mahogany under conducter Mark Wigglesworth.

“Anne Sofie von Otter sings and struts splendidly as the widow Begbik” wrote William Hartston in the Express. She sings, struts and signs splendidly, ‘graphing my sketch after her final performance last week.

Drawing: Christine Rice

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Christine Rice

Olivier nominated British mezzo-soprano Christine Rice is one of the leading operatic performers of her generation, regularly appearing in all the major venues across Europe, including Covent Garden, The Frankfurt Opera, The Teatro Real in Madrid, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and also the New York Metropolitan Opera.

Christine intended to follow a career in science like her chemistry lecturer father. She studied physics at Balliol College, Oxford, but her Doctorate was interrupted by a gap tar at the Royal Northern College of Music and her career path took a musical turn.

Since then she’s played a variety of roles, such as a vile punk brat in drag or a a Nero in Handel’s Agrippina, snorting ice sugar representing cocaine and wearing a prosthetic male appendage during one of her virtuoso arias to the sex starved Concepcion of Ravels’ one act farce L’Henre Espagnole, to name only two extremes. She’s also played Carmen and is notable for her Handelian roles such as Rinaldo, Arsace and Ariodante.

Christine has just finished Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s impassioned operatic satire on consumerism, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany at the Royal Opera House where she played a prostitute, Jenny, of which The Guardian’s Andrew Clements said, “The tart with at least a semblance of a heart is totally convincing.”

Christine signed this sketch of her in the role and also sent me a nice note, loving the drawing, which is always gratefully received.

Sketch: Frankie Boyle

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Frankie Boyle

Scottish comedian Francis Martin Patrick Boyle, known to all as Frankie, is one of the UK’s most popular and most controversial comics.

His genres are listed as one-liners, black comedy, blue comedy, surreal humour, improvisational comedy, insult comedy, pessimistic humour and political satire and he is exceptional at all of them, if not everyone’s cup of tea.

He once said he planned to quit stand up before he turned 40, but thankfully that age has passed and he’s still performing live. Frankie’s currently doing ‘work in progress’ shows around London. He did a short run at The Phoenix near Oxford Circus, where I caught up with him… with some trepidation, given his stage persona.

But I needn’t have worried, he was extremely pleasant as he arrived and headed to the basement performance area, in spite being interrupted by a ‘grapher wanting his pencil scribble signed at the precise moment his pen decided to slip through the hole in his jacket pock and lodge in the lining…

I quickly grabbed another pen from my bag and thanked Frankie for his patience and for his ‘graph and dedication. Sigh of comic relief… reminding myself of the first rule of autograph collecting, make sure you give them something to sign with!

Drawing: Philip Quast

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Phillip Quast

Australian actor and singer Philip Quast has won three Olivier Awards for Best Actor in a Musical. The powerful baritone’s impressive musical theatre career includes his career defining Inspector Javert for the original Australian production of Les Misérables, and later in London’s West End. In 1995 he was chosen for the 10th anniversary concert; Les Misérables: The Dream Cast in Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, which was beamed to a worldwinde audience and international recognition. He said he still gets mail about that performance. Colm Wilkinson played Jean Valjean and both are considered ‘definitives’ for the roles.

Playing Frenchmen seems to b a reoccurring pattern and an award winning one. Javert in Les Misérables, George Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George and Emile de Becque in South Pacific. Philip won Oliviers for the last two and in 1998 for his role as the crippled spin doctor in The Fix at London’s Donmar Warenouse.

Philip is currently playing the lecherous Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street at the London Coliseum with Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson. He had previously performed the role in a concert presentation alongside Bryn in 2007 at London’s Royal Festival Hall. This production is a transfer from last year’s staging in New York at the Lincoln Centre’s Avery Fisher Hall.

When I met Philip at the Coliseum’s stage door on a very warm spring afternoon he was full of the joys. There is an uncanny physical and voice similarity to Russell Crowe, who played Javert in Tom Hooper’s 2012 version of Les Mis. He also has a double in the cast, which I practiced on by mistake. Although flattered he obviously did not sign my sketch, preferring to leave it to the real Philip, who arrived half an hour later. The joys of autograph hunting.

Drawing: Blackadder’s BOB (Gabrielle Glaister sketch)

Posted on April 9, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Gabrielle Glaister

British actress Gabrielle Glaister was a school friend of Ben Elton and both appeared in a stage production of Oliver. Gabrielle in the lead role and Ben as the Artful Dodger. One of her first major TV appearances was in Blackadder II, which Ben co-wrote with Richard Curtis.

Her most memorable role in the Blackadder series was as ‘Bob’, a pseudonym used by her two female characters pretending to to be male. ‘Bob’ was one of the first characters to appear in the Blackadder II series. ‘Kate’ disguises herself as a man and is hired as a manservant by Lord Blackadder (turning Baldrick out into the street). He points out that ‘Kate’ is a girly name and calls her ‘Bob’ for short. Eventually her true gender is revealed and they become engaged, only for her to run off with Blackadder’s best man Lord Flashheart at the alter.

In the Blackadder Goes Forth episode “Major Star” Gabrille is General Melchett’s driver, Bob Parkhurst. Captain Blackadder recognisers her gender, but she begs him not to give her away. All her brothers are fighting and she wants to, “see how a war is fought so badly”. In the “Private Plane” episode, Melchett seems to know her true gender and she goes by the name of “Bobbie” only to be seduced and run off with Squadron Commander Lord Flashheart once again.

Gabrielle signed and dedicated this portrait and “Bob” montage drawing in London last week.

Drawing: Venera Gimadieva

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Venera Gimadieva

Hailed as the star of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, young Russian opera singer Venera Gimadieva is one of the most sought after sopranos in Europe.

This sketch is based on Venera in the role of Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata at Glyndebourne Opera House in East Sussex, England in July 2014. It followed her UK debut at the 2013 BBC Proms.

Guardian critic Andrew Clements wrote, “She is a soprano of huge presence, compelling to watch with a voice of thrilling security and a special quality to her quieter singing that makes you hang on every note.”

Venera joined conductor Guerassim Voronkov and the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra for a celebration of recent works by composers from Tatarstan alongside masterpieces by Tatar descent Sergey Rachmaninoff at the Royal Festival Hall last week, where she took time to sign the drawing.

West End Sketch: Harvey

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Harvey

The Birmingham Rep’s Lindsay Posner directed touring production of Harvey arrived at the West End’s Theatre Royal Haymarket last month for a two month residency until 2 May 2015.

This hilarious Pulitzer Prize winning comedy by Mary Chase, immortalised in the 1950 classic film starring Jimmy Stewart, was first produced on Broadway in 1944. It’s a whimsical fantasy about a wealthy a man and his constant companion Harvey – an invisible six foot 3 inch rabbit.

The play debuted in London after the war and since then Stewart himself made his West End debut in the 1975 revival and Gordon (Allo, Allo!) Kaye featured twenty years later at the Shaftesubry Theatre.

Another twenty years on James Dreyfus takes on the lead role of Elwood P. Dowd and Maureen Lipman is Veta, his socially ambitious and enjoyably deranged sister. What The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish calls “screwball magic”.

Maureen’s extensive theatre and screen work includes an Olivier Award in 1985 for See How They Run, The Sweeney, Smiley’s People, Coronation Street, Jonathan Creek, Holby City, Educating Rita and The Pianist.

French born James Dreyfus had his first television break in the BBC comedy series Absolutely Fabulous and has created memorable comedy characters such as Constable Kevin Goody in Ben Elton’s sitcom The Thin Blue Line and Tom Farrell, the gay flatmate in Gimme Gimme Gimme. He won the Best Supporting Performance in a Musical Olivier Award for the Lady in the Dark at the National in 1998.

I caught up with Maureen and James at the stage door before an evening performance a couple of weeks ago and both thankfully liked the drawing. Maureen has signed a sketch for me before and we had a brief discussion about drawing styles and capturing a likeness.

She said her portrait painter said that she was difficult to capture. She did like this sketch. My response was that because she has a variety of expressions – obviously an actor’s bread and butter – sometimes catering an expression can contradict a likeness, so portraits aren’t always physically representational.

Maureen’s such a great comic actress, relying on expression (and timing) so in my opinion makes a perfect drawing subject using a ‘lively pencil’ with plenty of energy.

‘Teeny Todd’ – Sweeney Todd by Tooting Arts Club, sketch

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Sweeney Todd Tooting Arts Club

In the winter of 2014 the Tooting Arts Club staged Stephen Sondheim’s musical masterpiece Sweeney Todd in Harrington’s, London’s Oldest Pie and Mash Shop. The intimate staging of the production in the 106 year old establishment in a Tooting side street had phenomenal success. “Site specific theatre at its very best,” wrote Henry Hutchings in the Evening Standard. Punters congregated at Anton’s Barber Shop before being shown through to Harrington’s Pie and Mash Shop for a pie and the performance.

One of those punters happened to be Mr Sondheim himself, who was bowled over by the intensity of the production that he contacted his friend, a certain Sir Cameron Mackintosh, no less, who allowed the TAC to create the West End’s first pop up theatre in a disused nightclub space sandwiched between his more illustrious Gielgud and Queen’s theatres in Shaftesbury Avenue for its revival run until the end of May 2015.

Unlike the epic, star-studded concert version across town at the London Coliseum, the Tooting Arts Club’s tiny 36 seater show prompted Matt Wolf form The Art’s Desk to nickname it “Teeny Todd,” saying it was, “downsized to dazzling effect”.

The Stage’s Mark Stenton simply aid “the smallest and most viscerally intense.” Reviewing Bill Buckhurst’s razor sharp production in the Guardian, Lyn Garnder said of the leads, “Jeremy Secomb’s superbly brooding and cadaver-like Sweeney may give you a very close shave. Siobhan McCarthy is a real treat as Mrs Lovett, self-deceiving and sad as well as comically monstrous”.

Duncan Smith, Ian Mowat, Kiara Jay, Nadim Naaman, Joseph Taylor and Zoe Doano make up the cast on which Hutchings commented, “Theres’ great work throughout the cast of eight… the quality of performances – and especially the voices – is remarkably high.”

I caught up with Jeremy and Siobhan after Saturday’s performance where they signed this sketch.