Tag Archives: Signature

Drawing: Iliza Shlesinger in Freezing Hot

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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: Barbara Windsor

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barbara windsor 2

She may be only four foot ten and a half inches tall, but she’s a towering giant when it comes to her fans.  The diminuitive  Barbara Windsor makes time for everyone, signing, posing and conversing…lots of conversing and ‘carrying on’.  Appropriately she played the first female God in the musical Spamalot during it’s Summer Season of Charity Celebrity Gods at London’s Playhouse Theatre in 2013. Her height, or lack of it was one of the reasons she accepted the role, saying,”this would be the first and only time people would look up to me.” Since starting her stage and screen career in the early 1950’s, she has scaled the heights with nominations for a  BAFTA for Sparrers Can’t Sing (1963) and a Tony in 1964 for Oh,What A Lovely War!

Barbara was at the British Film Institute a couple of weeks ago, so I quickly did this sketch based on her typical pose in the nine Carry On films she starred in during the sixties and seventies as the ‘good-time girl’. I think this one may have been from either Carry On Doctor or Carry On Doctor Again.To digress, she has an honorary doctorate from the University of East London.  Anyway, Barbs took the time to meet and greet the large crowd gathered to see her. When she saw this sketch, she commented, ‘We had such fun making those films” and wrote a great dedication in exemplary handwriting, before carrying on to the next person.

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

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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.

Drawing: Zawe Ashton in Salome

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zawe ashton

Jamie Lloyd’s 2010 production of Oscar Wilde’s  controversial, once-banned 1892 biblical play Salome featured actor,writer and director, Zawe Ashton in the title role as the wilful, head-hunting daughter of Herodias. Beginning in May at the Curve Theatre in Leicester it finished with a run at London’s Hampstead Theatre. “This updated Salome comes at you shrouded in mist, with a thumping soundtrack and its pants right down at its ankles and dragging in the dirt,” wrote Aleks Sierz in The Arts Desk, describing Zawe’s portrayal as “feisty raucousness”.  The Guardian’s Michael Billington said “Zawe Ashton’s dancing to a ghetto blaster and voluptuously kissing the severed head suggests an adolescent in the grip of fierce erotic imaginings.”

The Screen International’s 2009 ‘Star of Tomorrow’ and the winner of  Cosmopolitian Magazine’s ‘Ultimate Newcomer’ trophy at the Women of the Year’ Awards in 2012, Zawe is currently under commission to The Bush Theatre and the Clean Break Theatre Company. She is also appearing in the London Premiere of Abi Morgan’s Splendour at the Donmar Warehouse, where I caught up with her to sign this Salome sketch going in for last Saturday’s matinee.

Drawing: Stephen Merchant and Steffan Rhodri in The Mentalists

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the mentalists

“The oddest of odd couple comedy”, is how Richard Bean’s The Mentalists is described by a number of critics. “It’s a sympathetic understanding of the darker recesses of the human heart,” wrote Charles Spencer in the Mail.  The play revolves around Ted and Morrie, two men holed up in a budget hotel in Finsbury Park, making an apocalyptic video. Premiering in 2002 at the National, it was revived last month at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre, directed by Abbey Wright, with Steffan Rhodri as  Morrie and making his ‘impressive’ (The Independent) West End debut, Stephen Merchant as Ted. ‘Very Funny’, said TimeOut and Paul Taylor commented on the “fine Merchant-Rhodri chemistry”, in The Independent, so catch it before it finishes on 29 August!

I did a couple of sketches-one with Stephen, which he signed earlier in the run and one of the ‘oddest of odd couples’, which I got graphed over the weekend. So now I have an odd couple of drawings. 

Drawing: Dame Evelyn Glennie – Percussion Legend

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evelyn glennie

Grammy-winning Scottish musician Dame Evelyn Glennie is considered the world’s permier solo percussionist. Her eclectic range of styles has been described as ‘exquisite, unique and equal to a musical feast.’ This year she was awarded the Polar Music Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, known as the ‘Nobel Prize of Music’ in that country. The reason her 30 year career was honoured was because “Evelyn Glennie shows us that the body is a resonance chamber and that we live in a universe of sound.”

To put this into context, Dame Evelyn has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12. This has not inhibited her ability to perform. She regularly plays barefoot during her performances and studio sessions to ‘feel the music’ better and has taught herself to hear with parts of her body other than her ears. Her company’s motto is ‘Teach the World to Listen’ and she published  Hearing Lesson to discuss her condition in response to inaccurate reporting in the media. In 2012 Dame Evelyn collaborated with Underworld on the soundtrack to the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympic Games and performed live in the stadium.

The percussion legend returned to Proms this month with a lunchtime concert at London’s Cadogan Hall to celebrate her 50th birthday with a mesmerising musical party. I sent her this montage sketch to celebrate the occasion, which she signed.

Drawing: Joe Armstrong and Louise Brealey in Constellations

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Constellations

After premiering at the Royal Court Theatre in 2012, Nick Payne’s double-hander Constellations transferred to the Duke of York’s  in the West End, then onto Broadway before returning to London after a short UK tour to the Trafalgar Studios for a four-week run last month.

Described as ‘a singular love story with infinite possibilities’,  Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins played the original Roland and Marianne, the couple whose relationship is explored alongside the quantum multiverse theory. Jake Gyllenhaal made his Broadway debut with Ruth Wilson when the play moved to New York’s Manhatten Theatre Club in January 2013. The latest production featured Joe Armstrong and Louise Brealey taking to the stage, memorable for the glowing cluster of white balloons, which evoke, in the words of designer Tom Scutt, “synapses in the brain and atoms and sperm and weddings and parties..”…probably endless possibilities…like the play.

Louise sensibly walked to work on the Saturday when central London was gridlocked by a bike-mobilisation day so she arrived at the Trafalgar Studios with plenty of time to chat and sign my sketch. Joe biked…an unwilling participant in the RideLondon campaign, arriving late and dripping with perspiration. But he took the time to sign and christen my sketch with ink and a few drops of sweat.

Both Joe and Louise will appear in Husbands & Sons at the National’s Dorfman Theatre in October.

Drawing: Ralph Fiennes and Elisabeth Hopper in The Tempest

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The Tempest

Twenty-three year old newcomer Elisabeth Hopper’s big breakthrough came with her role as Miranda the teenage castaway in Trevor Nunn‘s hit London production of Shakepeare’s last play The Tempest opposite one of her idols, Ralph Fiennes, as her father Prospero at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in late 2011.

She made her stage debut earlier as a courtier in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, also directed by Sir Trevor at the same theatre.

Only two years prior to that Elisabeth was studying English and Drama at Manchester University, and described working with Ralph as “one of the things that dreams are made of,” to echo a line from the play.

In her audition, she performed one of Juliet’s speeches from Romeo and Juliet which Sir Trevor said was “as stunningly original and unexpected as I have ever come across.”

The production caused a bit of a storm at the box office with £1million advance tickets sales due to Ralph’s headlining appearance. “The combination of Ralph and Sir Trevor is a magical recipe” said co-producer Arnold Crook.

And it was a bit of a stormy opening night when I contemplated getting this sketch of Elisabeth and Ralph signed at the stage door. The lack of cover and positioning of the exit in a cul-de-sac creates its own ‘weather vortex’.

The Times critic Libby Purves even referred to the seasonal squall as the “first equinoctial gales swept London – a classic Tempest on and off the stage”.

Not an environment conjusive to signing. I left the drawing at the stage door, which both them signed and returned to me.

Drawing: Antony Sher and Tara Fitzgerald in Broken Glass

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Broken Glass

“Arthur Miller’s 1994 play towers over the dismal lowlands of current West End theatre like a majestic mountain peak.” wrote The Guardian’s Michael Billington in his five-star review of Broken Glass. Pretty impressive stuff from one of Britain’s leading critics.

The play focuses on Phillip and Sylvia Gellburg, a Jewish couple living in 1938 New York whose lives are affected by the anti-Semitic events of Kristallnacht (The night of Broken Glass) in Nazi Germany. Sylvia becomes paralysed from the waist down, a condition her doctor believes is psychosomatic and treats it as such. But what was the cause and who is the real cripple?

Originally staged in London at the National in 1994, this revival began at the Tricycle Theatre, a small fringe venue in Kilburn in late 2010. It returned for a month run in August the following year before transferring to the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End in September for a four month season. An excellent cast was headed by Antony Sher and Tara Fitzgerald in the lead roles. “Sher gives a superb performance of crippling anxiety…Fitzgerald brings a potent mixture of warmth,sensuality and grief,” wrote Charles Spencer of their performances in the Daily Telegraph. Both signed my sketch in person on a chilly winter’s evening at the stage door.

Drawing: Richard Herring in Christ on a Bike and Hitler Moustache

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richard herring

“It’s just not for me,” said comedian,writer,blogger and podcaster Richard Herring when he decided not to join the annual mass exodus of comics from London the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Described as “one of the leading hidden masters of modern British Comedy” and dubbed the ‘King of Edinburgh’,performing at 28 of the last Festivals, he has decided to ‘boycott’ it and perform a series of 12 shows at London’s Leicester Square Theatre this month. He told The Independent that the globe’s biggest fringe festival  had “changed so much that it’s unmanageable, exhausting and expensive.” Last year 49,497 artists performed at the event. “It’s overcrowded and over-priced,” he said.

Edinburgh’s loss is our gain. Included in Richard’s dozen at Leicester Square are his classics-Christ On A Bike and Hitler Moustache, ending with the premiere of his new hour-long show Happy Now. Running a little late for Saturday evenings performance of Talking Cock, I managed to grab Richard before he quickly slipped inside, equally quickly scribbling a dedication and his economical sig, saying “Sorry I need to be quick…good,” which could relate to the speed of the task or possibly the sketch.