Drawing: Richard O’Brien in The Rocky Horror Show

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

richard o brien

The cult classic The Rocky Horror Show returned to the West End this week for a limited, and already extended season at the Playhouse Theatre before embarking on a UK tour.

Also returning is the shows creator. Richard O’Brien, this time as the Narrator. When it premiered in the 63-seat upstairs ‘working space’ at the Royal Court Theatre in London’s Sloane Square in June 1973, Richard played Riff Raff, handyman to Tom Curry’s mad transvestite scientist, Frank N Furter. Both reprised their roles for the 1975 film adaption, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Riff Raff is a parody of Frankenstein’s servant Igor.

Considered ahead of its time in terms of attitudes towards gender, Richard is proud that it “made the climate for people who feel marginalised and lost in their journey as far as gender is concerned.” in a recent interview, discussing his ‘gender spectrum’ theory, he said, ‘It’s my belief that we are on a continuum between male and female. There are people who are hardline male and there are people who are hardlined female, but most of us are on the continuum. I think of myself 70% male and 30% female.”

I was pleased to meet him (and 30% her) at the Playhouse stage door before Saturday’s first of two evening performances. Extremely genial and accommodating with the die-hard fans and usual riff raff graphers alike. Like me has duel British-New Zealand nationality, so our converstion was more the citizenship spectrum than gender as he signed my drawing.

Drawing: Aga Radwanska

Posted on September 12, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

aga radwanska

Twenty six year old Polish tennis ace and former World Number 2 Agnieszka ‘Aga’ Radwanska has won fourteen career singles titles and reached the 2012 Wimbledon final. Prior to joining the WTA tour in 2006, she won both the Wimbledon and French junior titles. Her prowess on the court is matched off it, being voted WTA’s most popular player for four consecutive years (2011-2014), She was also listed as the ninth highest earning female athlete in the world according to American magazine Forbes in 2012.

As a practising Roman Catholic, Aga was part of the Polish Catholic campaign, “I’m not ashamed of Jesus!” and arranged her tennis balls so that they read out “Jezus”. After posing nude for the 2013 ESPN magazine’s The Body Issue she was disqualified from the campaign.

I missed getting Aga at Wimbledon this year, so sent this quick sketch of her to a fellow Californian-based autograph collector who specialises in sports sigs.

He caught up with Aga at the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford, in early August. She told him she really liked the sketch and was happy to sign and dedicate it.

Drawing: Hayley Mills in Ladies in Lavender

Posted on September 11, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

hayley mills

Hayley Mills returned to the stage in 2012 as Ursula in the world premiere of Ladies In Lavender, which toured the UK, including a season at London’s Richmond Theatre Adapted by Shaun McKenna from the popular film starring Maggie Smith and Judi Dench, the stage version is based on Charles Dance’s screenplay and William Locke’s original story. Set in a remote Cornish village, the lives of two spinster sisters (Hayley and Belinda Lang) are turned upside down by the arrival of a young Polish violinist. While most actors say that the script is the deciding factor for taking on a play, Hayley said it was the music, taken from the original score by Nigel Hess and performed by virtuoso Joshua Bell that swayed her. She said it immediately became her favourite piece of music as soon as she heard it. The Northampton Chronicle and Echo review said “Mills is stunning as Ursula, imbuing her with a girlish youth which makes her unrequited feelings ever poignant.”

I sent this sketch of Hayley as Ursula to her London agent and she returned it signed and dedicated within a week.

Drawing: Nicole Kidman in Photograph 51

Posted on September 10, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman returned to the West End after seventeen years absence in Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51 at the Noel Coward Theatre on Saturday night. Directed by Michael Grandage, it revolves around the story of molecular biologist Roselind Franklin and one of the twentieth century’s greatest achievements, the discovery of the DNA double helix or what scientists called ‘the secret of life.’ Central to the narrative is ‘Photo 51’, the name given to an x-ray image taken by one of Franklin’s researchers at King’s College in London, which revealed the double helix shape of deoxyribonucleic acid, a crucial starting point for research by Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins who identified how DNA was structured. All three men received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1962, four years after Franklin’s death of overian cancer at the age of 37. Debate about the amount of credit due to her still exists, but in his memoirs, Watson stated that ‘Photo 51’ provided the vital clue to the double helix. Many believe she should have been posthumously honoured by the Nobel Committee.

After receiving a standing ovation at the conclusion of Saturday night’s opening performance, Nicole graciously meet the huge throng waiting at the stage door barriers and did her best to sign and pose for more than 51 photographs as possible. Nicole’s signature probably has 51 plus variations. The common denominator is the downstroke of the first capital ‘N’ with a curl at it’s base, the rest can resemble multiple helixes, where sometimes you can make out a her name in various calligraphic contortions or a flourished line, as I got on this sketch. A glance around others who managed to get her graph confirmed this. Not one of them, apart from the said “N” looked the same. I guess you could say that everyone is truly original. Given the situation and the fact that she was only signing show material, I was pleased with the result.

Drawing: Aisling Bea

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Aisling Bea

Friends call her ‘a tart for a laugh’ which pretty much sums up Irish actress, comedian and writer Aisling Bea’s motive for doing comedy. ‘I’m just addicted to making people laugh,” she told Alice Jones for The Independent, before embarking on her second Edinburgh Fringe gig with Plan Bea during the entire month of August. The “Irish motormouth with an alarming range of rubbery facial expressions”, as Alice described her, has built up an impressive comic CV over the three years she has been doing stand-up with appearances on all the mainstream shows, including QI, Live At The Apollo, Never mind The Buzzcocks, Would I Lie To You and Celebrity Squares. Last year she collected the British Comedy Award for Best Female TV Comedian after winning the So You Think You’re Funny Award at Edinburgh the previous year. The Irish Tattler even named her it’s Entertainment Women of the Year in 2013.

Prior to her stint in Edinburgh, Aisling did some Fringe foreplay at London’s Leicester Square Theatre, where I left this sketch for her to sign.’Bea’ is actually her stage name, a homage to her late father-B for Brian-which she adopted at drama school because their was already an Aisling O’Sullivan. If you want to catch her live, ‘bea’ at the Leicester Square Theatre on Monday 14 September when she joins Jo Brand, Mae Martin, Kerry Godliman, Sara Pascoe and a host of others in Funny Ha Ha for the Live Life Safe campaign and the Suzy Lamplugh Trust or two days later in the Big Top at the Greenwich Comedy Festival.

Drawing: Rob Brydon in Future Conditional

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Welsh comedian and ‘fully fledged light entertainment personality’ Rob Brydon is currently starring in Future Conditional, the first production at the Old Vic theatre under its new artistic director Matthew Warchus, who has taken over from Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey. The play tackles the challenges of the British schooling system – a subject I have a close working knowledge of- written by Royal Court director-turned-writer Tamsin Oglesby. Rob plays an English Teacher, God held him. And it was the good Lord who was uttered as he saw this sketch when I stopped him whizzing out of the Old Vic stage door on Saturday night. I think it was an exclamation of admiration rather than a call to the almighty for help. “Oh my Lord,” he gasped followed by “Yes,yes.yes.”- the holy trinity of confirmation to my signing request.

Drawing: Carly Bawden in McQueen

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

carly b

Carly Bawden is starring as Dahlia in the West End transfer of McQueen at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, replacing Dianna Agron who played the role during the plays sell-out premiere season at the St James Theatre earlier this year. Written by James Phillips and directed by John Caird, It is a revelationary insight into the imagination of Lee “Alexander’ McQueen, one of British fashion’s most notorious and brilliant artists. Dahlia is based on a 2008 quote by the late designer. “I’ve got a 600 year-old elm tree in my garden. I made up a story: a girl lives in it and comes out of the darkness to meet a prince and becomes a queen.” In the play Lee discovers Dahlia, a strange and beautiful girl lurking in his house. She has been watching him from a tree for the past 11 nights. Instead of calling the police, he takes her on a wild one-night tour of London, believing she might know him better than he knows himself. Dahlia is his other self.

I drew this sketch of Carly as Dahlia wearing the centrepiece’golden feather coat’. It’s my favourite because of what it represents she said in a recent interview. ‘It’s quite a striking piece.He (McQueen) was always attracted to misogyny and things like that when all he really wanted to do was protect women…he said his clothes were like armour.The golden coat provides this striking, beautiful armour.”

Carly played Squeaky Fromme opposite Catherine Tate in Jamie Lloyd’s revival of Assassins at The Menier Chocolate Factory last year. I met her on the final night and she signed a Squeaky sketch for me. When we caught up again, at the Haymarket stage door after Saturday’s matinee, I asked her to graph this Dahlia drawing, said gasped, ‘Oh It’s YOU!”…but in a ‘nice way’-not a ‘you’re something on my shoe’ sorta way and was once again very complimentary about the rendering.

Drawing: Ricardo Chavira and Flor De Liz Perez in The Motherf**ker With The Hat

Posted on September 5, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

motherfucker in hat

It would be fair to say that the title of this play caught my attention. The Motherfucker with the Hat is sometimes censored as The Motherf**ker with the Hat and is a play by Pulitzer Prize winning Puerto Rican / American playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis which premiered at Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Thetare in April 2011. Earning six Tony nominations, it was described as a “high octane verbal cage match about love, fidelity and misplaced haberdashery”.

In June this year it received its UK premiere on the Lyttelton stage at the National Theatre, directed by Indhu Rubasingham.

In her four star Guardian review, Susannah Clap commented on “The National’s irritating decision to use asterisks,”as, “both coy and preening on their marketing material”. Stephen Collins continued this theme on the BritishTheatre.com site,”Given the number of times the word “motherfucker is bandied about, along with other sundry expletives, this misplaced sense of propriety is frankly embarrassing. It’s as if The National Theatre is slightly horrified by its choice”. He noted that the play was able to appear on Broadway billboards without asterisks.

Ricardo Chavira (from TVs Desperate Housewives plays former drug dealer Jackie who is on parole and living clean and sober. Flor De Liz Perez (now that’s a moniker to equal the play’s title) is his girlfriend Veronica who “still uses and boozes”. Jackie arrives at Veronica’s cramped Times Square studio apartment “full of good intentions and pent up testosterone”. As they’re jumping into bed he notices a hat… not his hat… so he accuse’s her of cheating which triggers a New York run around.

“Chavira is in bravura form and really squeezes every bit of interest out of his character and the situations. It’s tough, brutal, brooding at its best,” writes Collins. Flor De Liz Perez is, “sexy, vicious, bad tempered foul mouthed and effortlessly libidinous,” as the girl shared by Jackie and the titular hat wearer.

“She spits out offensive abuse with the same rigorous detachment that Julie Andrews enunciates consonants in The Sound of Music. It’s a full throttle performance”.

The National only has one stage door, but a myriad of exits and entrances, so I usually leave the sketch and hope it will be passed on to the respective talent. The productions are also in repertory which means that they are not performed everyday, so you have to plan your drop off carefully. I left this sketch early in the run when it was on stage over a few days in succession.

When nothing came back I figured I had missed the boat. Then yesterday two weeks after the final performance, this appeared in the mail.

Drawing: Genevieve O’Reilly in Splendour

Posted on September 4, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Genevieve O'Reilly

Irish-born, Australian-raised, London-based actress Genevieve O’Reilly is currently playing a Western photojournalist in Abi Morgan’s tense and gripping play Splendour at the Donmar Warehouse. She is waiting in a room to take the photo of a dictator in a fictional country with his wife, her best friend and an interpreter. All four women harbour secrets. All four are in danger and the dictator is late…very late.

I met Genevieve in late 2010 at the then Comedy Theatre, (now Harold Pinter) when she was in Sebastian Faulk’s stage version of his novel Birdsong with Ben Barnes. They both signed sketches for me. When I met her a couple of weeks ago at the Donmar to get this drawing graphed, she remembered me and said she still has the copy of the Birdsong one I gave both her and Ben.

Drawing: Stacy Lewis

Posted on September 3, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Golf clubs to golfers are kind of like pens to graphers…reasonably essential. Former World Number 1 and two-time major winner, American golfer Stacy Lewis arrived in Scotland in July for this years British Women’s Open Championship minus her clubs. British Airways had misplaced them…then told her it would take 24 hours to find…then she and her caddie had to make the 300-plus mile trek to London to collect them….then they got a flat tyre. In all of this however the 30 year-old star of the LPGA and currently third in the rankings, still had the good-nature and more importantly a pen to sign this sketch for me.