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: 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: 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.

Drawing: Ellie Bamber

Posted on September 2, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

ellie bamber

Eighteen year-old Ellie Bamber is amongst the latest group of rising stars in the British stage and screen scene. Her angelic face came in handy for her latest theatre role as the 14 year-old Dinah Lord in Maria Friedman’s ‘effervescent’ revival of Cole Porter’s High Society at The Old Vic. Promoting her role, which she was attracted to because it was “quite cheeky and good fun,” Ellie appeared in a number of print media publications, one of which I was flicking through on the tube. A photo accompanied it, which I thought would be cool to draw…so i did, then dropped it into the theatre for her to sign…which she did.

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.