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: Jessica Brown Findlay in Oresteia

Posted on September 1, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Jessica Brown Findlay

Oresteia premiered at the Dionysia Festival in Athens in 458 BC. Now it’s been called one of “the year’s theatrical sensations” by The Guardian’s Charlotte Higgins…well Robert Ickes’ contemporary re-working of the Aeschylus’ trilogy of Ancient Greek tragedies, which had its summer season at London’s small Almeida Theatre has been given that accolade, because it has now deservedly transferred to the West End. In the director’s own words, “it’s the mother of the violent family drama…and feels increasingly like the precursor of The Sopranos.” Playing the Trafalgar Studios for a limited season until November, the story revolves around the usual Greek family drama tragedy themes, murder, revenge and retribution. The plot sees the titular character Orestes and his sister Electra (or Elektra as some care to spell it ), plotting revenge against their mother and stepfather for the murder of their father. Sound familiar? After a short, but acclaimed screen career, twenty-five year-old British actress Jessica Brown Findlay made her stage debut as the ‘gutsy’ sis.

I read in all her recent interviews that Jessica doesn’t like to be referred to as a Downton Abbey actress, so I won’t and I didn’t mention it when she signed this Electra sketch for me at the Trafalgar’s stage door on Saturday. Oh and as a postscript, the play won first prize in the Dionysia Festival in Athens way back in 458 BC, and this production looks like it might garner some awards of it’s own.

Stephen Wight and Tracy-Ann Oberman in McQueen

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

McQueen

John Caird’s stylish production McQueen about the late celebrated fashion designer Lee ‘Alexander’ McQueen, which premiered earlier this year to sell-out audiences at London’s St James Theatre, began its West End run at the Theatre Royal Haymarket last week.

Coinciding with the fifth anniversary of the designer’s death, James Phillips study is not a ‘bio-play’ wrote Fiona Mountford in her Evening Standard review.” The trippy action unfolds over one long night of the soul somewhere very near the end of McQueen’s troubled, high-achieving life.” Considered one of the most innovative designers of his generation, the ‘tortured genius’ hung himself with his favourite brown belt in 2010. The Guardian’s Michael Billington described the production as “primarily an act of worship, a secular hymn to a famous iconoclast who tragically died young at the age of 40.” The critic also wrote, “An excellent lead performance by Stephen Wight…with good support from Tracy-Ann Oberman,” as McQueen’s mentor Isabella Bow, who bought his entire 1992 graduation collection and persuaded him to use his middle name Alexander for his own fashion label. She committed suicide in 2007.

Savage Beauty – a retrospective exhibition of McQueen’s work finished this month at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

I met both Stephen and Tracy-Ann going in for last Saturday’s matinee and they were more than happy to sign this sketch.

Drawing: Alice Marshall in Alice’s Comedy Wonderland

Posted on August 29, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

alice marshall

“Alice Marshall is a proper actor,” prefaced Martin Walker in his Three Minute interview with her for BroadwayBaby.

In spite of many TV roles, including recently playing Mary Magdalene in The Jesus Mystery “comedy is also in her blood”. Martin’s first question was “You’re an actor, comic and voice over artist. Have I left anything out? Which comes first and why?” Alice replied. “and astronaut obviously. But who isn’t these days?” She said they all “sort of mesh together most of the time and the skills are similar in all facets of entertainment”.

She performed her debut solo comedy show Vicious at London’s Museum of Comedy last month, with the slogan “Life is Cruel. People are arseholes. This is vicious.” Alice takes a long hard look at the world through the eyes of the hurt, the lonely, the angry, the mad, the sad and the completely unhinged.

The Spectator wrote, “she manages to be erotic and extremely funny at the same time without being effortful or cheesy about it. A natural…”

Last year Alice was part of Canal Café Theatre’s long running News Review at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and was also part of Alice’s Comedy Wonderland at the Phoenix Artist’s Club in Soho earlier this year, described by Time Out as “going down the surreal comedy rabbit hole at this weirdo gig featuring a collection of comics”. This sketch, which she signed for me, is based on that gig.

Drawing: Anna Morris in It’s Got To Be Perfect

Posted on August 28, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Anna Morris

Character comic and writer Anna Morris, star of ITV’s Bad Bridesmaid and the BBC’s Outnumbered, performed some work-in-progress gigs of her new show It’s Got To Be Perfect at the Leicester Square Theatre and Museum of Comedy before taking it to this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

It’s an interactive wedding rehearsal featuring Georgina the Bridezilla, from Anna’s viral YouTube series Georgina’s Wedding Blogs, she’s getting married and it’s got to be perfect… or else.

Currently playing to packed houses at Edinburgh’s Voodoo Rooms, EdFringeReview wrote, “not only is it funny, it’s interesting, creative and sweet,”

Speaking of sweet, Anna included a promotional love heart candy, when she returned my signed sketch through the mail, which didn’t help the condition of the artwork through the letterbox but left a nice taste in the mouth.

Drawing: Michelle Fairley in Splendour

Posted on August 27, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

michelle fairley

Northern Irish actress Michelle Fairley has returned to London’s Donmar Warehouse for it’s season of Abi Morgan’s power play Splendour. In 2008 she played Iago’s wife Emilia in Othello at the same, intimate Covent Garden venue. It was her lauded portrayal that impressed the Game of Thrones writers , who saw her performance and offered her the role of the ‘maternal Boadicea’, Catelyn Stark in the hit HBO TV series. Inspite of an impressive list of small screen credits, Michelle says that theatre is her preference, hence her return to the boards. She is part of an all-female quartet, which includes Sinead Cusack, Zawe Ashton and Genevieve O’Reilly, playing the best friend of the wife of a dictator whose unnamed regime is collapsing around him.

London-based since 1986, Michelle has openly stated her dislike for Hollywood, where she has worked on a number of projects, including her recurring role as Dr. Ava Hessington in Suites. With that recognition comes the usual increased attention-something I got the impression Michelle isn’t comfortable with. She seemed a little more happier to sign my sketch at the theatre than the piles of glossy 8×10 Thrones stills the swarm of dealers gave her to graph.

Drawing: Iliza Shlesinger in Freezing Hot

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

iliza s soho

Thirty-two year old Texan Iliza Shlesinger has finally made her UK debut at London’s Soho Theatre, a decade after becoming the only female and youngest winner of the US talent show Last Comic Standing. Her first TV Special War Paint reached Number 1 on the American iTunes chart and her follow-up Netflix Special Freezing Hot received rave reviews. It is the latter that she is performing at the Soho until the end of August, exposing women’s best kept secrets with opinions on things from first date attire, fantasy breakups, the constant pursuit of not being cold while still looking hot to imagining life as a mermaid and the general state of her nation. TimeOut’s Danielle Goldstein wrote, “Dressed from head to toe in black, in jeans tight enough to put the ‘vagina in a chokehold’, Iliza Shlesinger commands the stage…fearlessly delivers embarrassing anecdotes we can all relate to.” ( Note: My sketch does not depict her in black from head to toe…it saves lead and possibly gets me more carbon credits.)

As I have said, laboriously, the Soho can be an awkward venue to nab the sketch subject for a siggy. With three stages, the intimate environs can become overpeopled with patrons toing and froing. In this case, I got a tad lucky. I was seated at a table near the foyer from wence Iliza would hopefully emerge from the downstairs stage. I had planned to finish my Pilsner with a few minutes to spare before strategically positioning myself in, what I call the ‘salmon spawning spot’ (you know, swimming upstream) as the audience emerged.With three sips of my beverage to go, one of the bar staff placed a reserve sign on my table ‘For Iliza, 8.30pm’ it read. Something about Mohammed and the mountain came to mind, but I quickly informed the barman, as the crowd poured in at 8.31, that I would vacate as soon as she arrived, which she duly did and happily signed my sketch.

Drawing: Irina Kolesnikova in Swan Lake

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

irina k swan lake

One of the world’s finest classical dancers performed the world’s favourite ballet this week at the London Coliseum. The St Petersburg Ballet Theatre concluded it’s 2015 International touring programme of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake with prima ballerina Irina Kolesnikova headlining the season as both the Swan Queen ‘Odete’ and the antagonist ‘Odile’ at the iconic venue. The production also included special guest artists from Russia’s legendary Bolshoi and Mariinsky Theatres and the English capitals own Royal Ballet. “It’s Kolensnikova that steals the show,” wrote Londonist’s Tiffany Pritchard, “…with her long, willowy arms, supple back arches and lithe yet perfectly controlled pirouettes on the white swan (Odette), followed in quick succession by the robust, high-spirited sequences of the black swan (Odile).” Originally the two roles were played by separate dancers, but it has become customary for prima ballerinas to perform both parts. The Telegraph’s Vanessa Keys said of Irina’s performance,”Her portrayal of the vulnerable swan queen Odette is almost unbearably vulnerable and her Odile is wickedly seductive.”

I’m a novice when it comes to watching and understanding ballet, but I love drawing dancers and their kinetic effect. This pose of Irina as Odette was striking in its simplicity. I just had to draw it…and naturally meet the dancing Swan Queen herself and have it signed. I waited with a handful of dance devotees at the stage door as a procession of performers flowed out, into the balmy evening air, signing programmes and partaking in convivial conversation. But no one with a ‘long neck and liquid doe-like eyes’ ( as one reviewer described her), resembling Uma Thurman-my reference for Irina-appeared. After an hour and a half, with the time of my last train home fast approaching a Russian gentleman, who was obviously connected to the production and chatting to the more devout of the devotees said, ‘I’ll go and get her.” And he did. I happened to be the first in line. She was very nice and said “Oh” when she saw the sketch and signed it. In the absence of any interpretation I took “Oh” as an expression of approval. Time well spent and I caught the last train.

Drawing: Claire Dunne and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor in Juno and the Paycock

Posted on August 21, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Juno and the Paycock

Howard Davies’s acclaimed 2011 revival of Sean O’Casey’s second play of his Dublin trilogy Juno and the Paycock transferred from Dublin’s Abby Theatre to the National’s Lyttelton stage in London at year end. Considered one of the great plays of the 20th Century, it paints the devasting portrait of wasted potential of the poverty-striken Boyle family during the chaos of the 1922 Irish Civil War. Joining leads Ciaran Hinds and Sinead Cusack were Clare Dunne as the daughter Mary and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as her rejected suitor and unionist Jerry Devine.

I’m Winter by name…not by nature so the Winter of 2011/12 ..or for that matter, any Winter is not a good time to hang around stage doors. The National’s at least has cover, but it can’t prevent the sub-zero temperatures stopping the flow of the sharpies and the sharpies owner’s blood. That is when I take the seasonal approach, leaving the artwork in the warmth of the stage door manager’s desk and relying on the frozen Royal Mailperson to deliver it back to me. It gives one a warm feeling when the plan works, which it did in this case.