Drawing: Anna Carteret in Shakespeare in Love

Posted on October 10, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

British stage and screen actress Anna Carteret has quite literally follow in footsteps of Dame Judi Dench playing Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love and on the same stage as the great Dame recently performed in Peter and Alice – The Noël Coward Theatre in London. She is probably best known on the small screen as Police Inspector Kate Longton in th BBC’s long-running 1980s series Juliet Bravo

Anna made her first stage appearance as a cloud and a jumping bean in the panto Jack and the Beanstalk at the Palace Theatre in Watford in December 1957.

She joined Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre Company at the Old Vic in 1967 and over many a decade her performances included Olivia in Twelfth Night, Queen Isabel in Richard II, Roxane in Cyrano, Chorus in Oedipus and Anya in The Cherry Orchard.

Anna has played a Queen Elizabeth before, in the National’s 1979 production of Richard III. She also played Queen Margaret in the same play, for the Royal Shakespeare Company 20 years later. Throughout the 1990s as a member of The Peter Hall Company she appeared on both West End and the Broadway boards.

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: Dame Judi Dench as Elizabeth I

Posted on October 12, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Dame Judi Dench is considered to be one of the greatest actresses of the post-war period, primarily through her work in theatre, including several of Shakespeare’s plays.

However, it was a Shakespearean role in a film about the Bard that won her film’s most coveted award – the Oscar (she also won the BAFTA). Playing Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love (1999) for only a few minutes earned her the Best Supporting Actress statue. In her acceptance speech she said “I feel for eight minutes on the screen, I should only get a little bit of him.” Her understated take on the monarch does set much of the film’s plot in motion.

Dame Judi signed my sketch through the post and sent me a nice complimentary letter.