Drawing: Flora Spencer-Longhurst, William Houston and Indira Varma in Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare’s Globe

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Shakespeare’s Globe opened its 2014 summer season with a revisiting of Lucy Bailey’s hugely successful Titus Andronicus.

Audience members were warned in advance of its grisly content with the offer of witnessing one of the darkest and most seminal productions in the Globe’s history. In the height of summer in 2006 dozens of people who bought standing tickets fainted each show. Fainting isn’t exactly uncommon amongst Globe groundlings (£5 standing ticket holders) so, “our front of house staff are very well trained,” said a Globe spokesperson.

Grotesquely violent and daringly experimental, Titus was the smash hit of Shakespeare’s early career, “written with a ghoulish energy he was never to repeat. “It stars William Houston as the unstable Roman general Titus and Indira Varma as the haughty Goth Queen Tamora in what one critic described as ‘Tarantino-esque’.

Playing Lavinia, Titus’s daughter, actress Flora Spencer-Longhurst has her tongue and hands cut off after she is raped. “Despite my character having her tongue ripped out, it is the most articulate role I have ever played!” she told The Daily Mail.

On one particular evening alone it was reported that five people had fainted. The Independent’s Holly Williams wrote, “A confession: I fainted. I’m not alone. Audience members are dropping like flies at this revival of Lucy Bailey’s infamously gory 2006 staging.”

Escaping the bloodshed on Saturday for the final performance, I dodged raindrops and left this sketch at the stage door, which Williams, Indira and Flora kindly signed for me, without spilling a drop of red stuff on it.

Drawing: Amanda Drew, Samuel West, Tim Pigott-Smith, Tom Goodman-Hill in Enron at the Noel Coward Theatre

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

The world premiere production of Lucy Prebble’s celebrated play Enron sold out its entire run at the Minerva Theatre Chichester and all of its tickets before opening its six week run at the Royal Court. It transferred to the Noel Coward Theatre in January 2010. Directed by Rupert Goold, the cast featured Samuel West, Amanda Drew, Tim Pigott-Smith and Tom Goodman-Hill.

Enron was inspired by one of the most famous scandals in financial history, reviewing the tumultuous 1990s and casting a new light on the fiscal turmoil in which the world currently finds itself. Its tagline: A true story of false profits.

Despite its commercial and critical success, Enron lasted just over a month on Broadway at the Broadhunt Theatre in the Summer of 2010. A ‘hostile’ review by The New York Times critic Ben Brantley is thought to have contributed to the premature clsoure. As the Guardian’s Michael Billington pointed out, “no serious play on Broadway can survive a withering attack from The New York Times, which carries the force of a papal indictment”. It did pick up a Tony nomination for Original Score.

The four leads all signed my sketch at the Noël Coward stage door on 8 May 2010.

Drawing: Julie Atherton as Kate Monster in Avenue Q

Posted on July 11, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Julie Atherton was part of the original West End cast of the musical Avenue Q when it transferred from Broadway to the Noël Coward Theatre in June 2006. She played Kate Monster and Lucy the Slut until December 2007, returning to the production at the Gilegud in late 2008 until October 2009. I saw the show in June that year where Julie signed these sketches for me.

Julie will be playing the lead role in Thérèse Raquin at the Park Theatre in London from 31 July to 24 August 2014.

Drawing: Mark Rylance, Miriam Margolyes, Simon McBurney and Tom Hickey in Endgame

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

‘Graph collecting in London in the dead of winter. What better than to stalk a Samuel Beckett play to match the cold, dark and bleak elements. The fourth revival in a decade of Beckett’s Endgame at the Duchess Theatre, considered along with Waiting for Godot to be among his most important works. One critic said it was like “watching a world edge into darkness.” Beeckett liked his plays to be as colourlesss as posssible. This one seems to be set in a grey area somehere near the end of the literary universe. The title is taken from the last part of a chess game, when there are very few pieces left. It involves four characters; Hamm, who is blind and unable to stand; Clov, a servant, unable to sit; Nagg, Hamm’s father with no legs and lives in a dustbin and Hamm’s mother, Nell, who also lives in a dustbin next to her husband and has no legs. Simon McBurney directed te production and played Clov, with Mark Rylance as Hamm. It also featured Tom Hickey as Nagg and Miriam Margolyes as Nell. The Duchess is on of the few West End Theatres to have veranda over the stage door, because it’s only a few metres away form the man entrance. However, on a particularly inclement November night in 2009, driving horizontal rain with extras rendered it useless – in fact it became a collection point for large quantities of H2O and acted as a a sieve. thankfully one drip landed on my caption text and not the artwork or sigs. God respects ‘graphers, me thinks.

Drawing: Imogen Stubbs in Little Eyolf at the Jermyn Street Theatre

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Actress and playwright Imogen Stubbs is a veteran of over 40 plays, starting with the role of Sally Bowles in Cabaret at the Wolsey Theatre in 1985. In 2011 she took her most harrowing part as Rita in Henrik Ibsen’s 1894 play Little Eyolf at the Jermyn Street Theatre in London.

“No one could describe Ibsen’s play as fun, but Imogen Stubb’s performance almost blows the roof off the theatre,” wrote Charles Spencer in The Telegraph.

Imogen’s most recent foray onto the West End boards was Strangers On A Train. She signed this sketch for me at the Jermyn Street Theatre in May 2011.

Drawing: Jonathan Pryce in The Caretaker at Trafalgar Studios

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce is equally at home on screen and stage. Critically lauded for his versatility, Jonathan’s breakthrough film performance was in Terry Gilliam’s 1985 cult film Brazil. Five years earlier he won the Olivier Award for his title role in the Royal Court’s production of Hamlet. In his Broadway debut he won the Tony for Comedians in 1997. He collected his second Olivier and Tony for playing the engineer in Miss Saigon.

Jonathan’s filmography includes The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest, Evita, Glengarry Glen Ross, Tomorrow Never Dies and Carrington, for which he won the Best Actor award at Cannes. Jonathan was also nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his role as Henry Kravis in the 1993 television film Barbarians At The Gate.

While starring in the National’s My Fair Lady his co-star Martine McCutcheon was so frequently absent that he made an appeal form the stage for any member of the audience who fancied playing Eliza to make themselves known.

In 2010 he played Davies, the loquacious tramp in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker at the Trafalgar Studios in London. It transferred from an initial run at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre. He had previously appeared in the National Theatre’s 1981 production of the play in the role of Mick, the dangerous young hustler. “It’s one of those plays you graduate through in the course of your life,” Jonathan was quoted.

Drawing: Gemma Arterton in The Duchess of Malfi at Shakespeare’s Globe

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Gemma Arterton made her professional stage debut at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2007, with huge critical acclaim as Rosaline in Loves’s Labour’s Lost while still a student at RADA. She returned at the beginning of the year to play the title role in the Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi by English dramatist John Webster directed by Dominic Dromgoole.

It opened the curtain on the inaugural season at the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse – an intimate 340 seat indoor Jacobean theatre, built from authentic designs and craftsmanship of the period. It is named after the director and actor who founded the modern recreation of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. The conspiratorial atmosphere is enhanced with the 17th century practice of being lit almost solely by beeswax candles.

The Duchess is one of the great theatrical roles for women and Gemma jumped at the chance to play her on such a magical stage. “It’s like Tarantino,” she said, “there’s mass bloodshed, incest, violence, lots of kick-arse stuff and everybody dies in the end.” Gemma’s own death scene is gruesome. She is strangled with two ropes pulling in opposing directions for nearly ten minutes.

Drawing: Andrew Scott, Lisa Dillon and Tom Burke in Design for Living

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Initially banned in the UK, Noël Coward’s 1932 provocative, witty, dark, bisexual comedy Design For Living had a major revival at London’s Old Vic in the Winter of 2010.

Directed by Old Vic Associate and Tony Award winner Anthony Page, the production featured Tom Burke (Otto), Lisa Dillon (Gilda) and Andrew Scott (Leo) as the menage-a-trois in this three act, two interval play.

Otto is a painter, Leo is a playwright and Gilda is an interior designer. The lines of engagement are: Gilda lives with artist Otto, but is equally drawn to playwright Leo. The two men, however, have enjoyed intimacy that predates Gilda.

Critic Michael Billington said, “the play offers a genuine contest between the bohemian talentocracy and moral orthodoxy. It is an attack on bourgeois stuffiness.”

As Leo puts it, “I love you. You love me. You love Otto. I love Otto. Otto loves you. Otto loves me,” providing the basis for the play’s plot convolutions.

Drawing: Bryan Cranston in All The Way on Broadway

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Bryan Cranston won this year’s Tony award for his portrayal of the former US president Lyndon B Johnson in the play All The Way at the Neil SImon Theatre on Broadway. The title of the play takes its name from Johnson’s 1964 campaign slogan ‘All The Way With LBJ’.

It was a good year for winning awards. His role as Walter White in Breaking Bad earned him a Golden Globe, after five nominations. It was a role he had previously won three consecutive Emmys for.

Bryan attended the May premiere of Godzilla at the Odeon in Leicester Square. I had hoped to get him to sign it in person. Alas, I missed, so sent i tot him at the theatre in New York, where he kindly signed and returned it.

Drawing: Penn and Teller

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Two of my favourite entertainers – in fact, the world’s favourite entertainers – are the magical and comical duo of Penn and Teller. The American illusionists Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller celebrated 40 years in the business with a five night gig this month at London’s Eventim Apollo.

They have been the resident headliners at the Rio in Las Vegas since 2001, and appear regularly on the small screen, including a show called ‘Bullshit!’. The 2,494th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was dedicated to them in April 2013.