Drawing: Emma Williams, Rhiannon Chesterman and Katrina Kleve in Mrs Henderson Presents

Posted on February 27, 2016 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Mrs Henderson Presents

Terry Johnson’s musical stage adaption of the 2005 film MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS that featured Dame Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins, premiered at the Theatre Royal Bath last August and has transferred to London’s Noel Coward Theatre.

Olivier winner Tracie Bennett plays the eccentric 70 year-old widow Laura Henderson, who buys turns the London’s famous Windmill cinema into a live theatre, staging continuous variety revues at the beginning of the First World War. When her competition threatens to put her out of business, Mrs Henderson introduced female nudity, which was unprecedented in the UK at the time and based it on the Moulin Rouge in Paris. The Lord Chamberlain reluctantly agreed to the nudity under the condition that the performers remain immobile, thus becoming living works of art, similar to nude statues.

Olivier-nominated Emma Williams, along with Rhiannon Chesterman and Katrina Kleve are the show’s poster girls, perfect sketching subjects. I left this drawing at the theatre for them to sign which they kindly did.

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.

Sketch: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Hay Fever at the Noel Coward Theatre

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Hay Fever Phoebe Waller Bridge

I first met the exquisite Phoebe Waller-Bridge during the revival of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever at the Noel Coward Theatre in February 2012, where she was playing the “tittering nymph” Sorel Bliss. Amongst her dialogue is the line, “I should like to be a fresh, open air girl with a passion for games”.

The Guardian’s Michael Billington said her performance, “makes something truly memorable of Judith’s daughter, whom she plays as a gauche 19 year old trying strenuously hard to be soigné and sophisticated”.

“Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s breathtaking Sorel has perfected a gauche angularity, intermittent mannishness and a toddler’s baleful pout” wrote Kate Kellaway also in The Guardian.

Seen recently on TV as the steely young lawyer Abby Thompson in the popular ITV crime drama Broadchurch, the award winning actress writiter and director will now write and star in her own E4 comedy Crashing about a group of young property guardians. In a recent interview Phoebe spoke about writing and performing and, “the tiptoeing line between laughing and crying. That, for me is the key to drama. If you make people laugh, they make themselves so vulnerable to you… and then you can stab them”.

Sketch: Jeremy Northam, Hay Fever at the Noel Coward Theatre

Posted on May 6, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Hay Fever Jeremy Northam

British actor Jeremy Northam returned to London’s West End after a lengthy absence to play the bamboozled uptight diplomat Richard Greatham in the 2012 revival of Noël Coward’s Hay Fever at the theatre named after the celebrated playwright.

Jeremy’s stage career got off to an auspicious beginning, replacing Daniel Day Lewis in the role of Hamlet at the National in 1989 before winning an Olivier Award a year later for his performance in The Voysey Inheritance.

“A peach of a performance… quivering with shy lust,” wrote Michael Billington in The Guardian of Jeremy’s performance in Hay Fever. Among Jeremy’s many acclaimed screen roles is as Welsh actor and signer Ivor Novello in Gosford Park (2012) “I think this performance by Jeremy Northam is one of the really, best performances I’ve ever seen in film” said its director, Robert Altman.

Sketch: Amy Morgan, Hay Fever at the Noel Coward Theatre

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Hay Fever Amy Morgan

TV audiences may know Welsh Amy Morgan as Mr Selfridge‘s accessories girl Grace Calthorpe gossiping among the gloves and bags, but I became aware of her acting prowess in Noel Coward’s country weekend comedy Hay Fever at London’s Noel Coward Theatre in 2012.

She played Jackie Coryton, described by critic Julia Rank, “Amy Morgan is enjoyable as the ignored dumb blonde Jackie, perhaps the most endearing character, invited so that Mr Bliss could study a flapper in domestic surroundings”.

Kate Kellaway called Amy’s performance, “wonderful” in her Guardian review. Amy won a prestigious Ian Charleson Award nomination for The Country Wife at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester She was awarded the runner up prize.

Sketch: Lindsay Duncan, Hay Fever at the Noel Coward Theatre

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Hay Fever Lindsay Duncan

For his masterly revival of Hay Fever, the first Noel Coward play staged at the Noel Coward Theatre, director Howard Davies assembled a phenomenal cast, headed by the “consistently first class” Lindsay Duncan as the matriarchal Judith Bliss.

The production, which ran from February to June in 2012 reunited both director and actor who together received seven major international theatre awards for another Coward revival, Private Lives in 2001. Lindsay won her second Olivier Award for that performance opposite Alan Rickman. She also received a Tony nomination when the play transferred to Broadway.

Quentin Letts in the MailOnline opened his five star review, “behold Lindsay Duncan in full sail as Noël Coward’s nightmarish Judith Bliss”. The Telegraph’s Tim Walker added, Lindsay Duncan is on splendidly imperious form as Judith Bliss.”

Among Lindsay’s impressive CV is a little known fact that she was the voice of the android TC-14 in Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace to please her young son.

Sketch: Hay Fever at the Noël Coward Theatre

Posted on May 2, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Hay Fever

Noel Coward’s 1924 play Hay Fever is often described as the quintessential English play – a cross between high farce and a comedy of manners. It had a major West End revival at the theatre named after him in 2012.

Both The Telegraph’s critics Charles Spencer and Tim Walker gave it five stars. “Howard Davies cracking production… superbly funny… transforms triviality into comic perfection”. Tim called it “excruciatingly funny”. Michael Billington wrote in The Guardian, “it helps that he has a cast that could, as Coward said of his own 1964 revival, play the Albanian telephone directory”.

Led by the sublime Lindsay Duncan as Judith Bliss, the stellar cast included Kevin McNally as her testy and bookish husband, who’s “wearing a bit thin now” and the delightful Olivia Colman as the predatory vamp Myra Arundel.

This is one of a series of sketches I drew based on the production which both Olivia and Kevin signed in May 2012. The latest revival with Felicity Kendal opened this week at the Duke of York’s theatre in London, so I know what I’ll be drawing this week.

Drawing: Lucy Briggs-Owen and Tom Bateman in Shakespeare In Love at the Noel Coward Theatre

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

“I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all.”

After six weeks of rehearsals and three weeks of previews, Shakespeare In Love opened at the Noel Coward Theatre in London last month, sixteen years after the original film version.

Featuring a company of 28 actors and musicians, this sweeping rom-com, based on the Oscar winning screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, has been adapted for the stage by Lee Hall, directed Declan Donnellan.

Shakespeare in forbidden love summarises the tale of a promising new playwright, Will (Tom Bateman), short of cash with writer’s block and in desperate need of a new hit, finding his muse in passionate young noble woman Viola De Lesseps (Lucy Briggs-Owen) who inspires him to write Romeo and Juliet.

The play within a play (with music) opened to excellent reviews and is booking through to 25 October this year. There’s also a dog named Barney. He sometimes steals the show.

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: Sarah Greene in The Cripple of Inishmaan at The Noël Coward Theatre

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Martin McDonagh’s cruel and disgracefully funny The Cripple of Inishmaan premiered in 1997 and received its first major revival as part of Michael Grandage’s star-studded first season of plays at the Noël Coward Theatre during the summer of 2013.

Irish actress Sarah Greene plays Helen, the love (albeit secret) interest of the disabled hero Billy – a feisty village wild girl who can’t be restrained from “pegging” eggs at people, especially despised priests, “… getting clergymen groping your arse doesn’t take much skill.”