Drawing: Hayley Mills in Ladies in Lavender

Posted on September 11, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

hayley mills

Hayley Mills returned to the stage in 2012 as Ursula in the world premiere of Ladies In Lavender, which toured the UK, including a season at London’s Richmond Theatre Adapted by Shaun McKenna from the popular film starring Maggie Smith and Judi Dench, the stage version is based on Charles Dance’s screenplay and William Locke’s original story. Set in a remote Cornish village, the lives of two spinster sisters (Hayley and Belinda Lang) are turned upside down by the arrival of a young Polish violinist. While most actors say that the script is the deciding factor for taking on a play, Hayley said it was the music, taken from the original score by Nigel Hess and performed by virtuoso Joshua Bell that swayed her. She said it immediately became her favourite piece of music as soon as she heard it. The Northampton Chronicle and Echo review said “Mills is stunning as Ursula, imbuing her with a girlish youth which makes her unrequited feelings ever poignant.”

I sent this sketch of Hayley as Ursula to her London agent and she returned it signed and dedicated within a week.

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: Aisling Bea

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Aisling Bea

Friends call her ‘a tart for a laugh’ which pretty much sums up Irish actress, comedian and writer Aisling Bea’s motive for doing comedy. ‘I’m just addicted to making people laugh,” she told Alice Jones for The Independent, before embarking on her second Edinburgh Fringe gig with Plan Bea during the entire month of August. The “Irish motormouth with an alarming range of rubbery facial expressions”, as Alice described her, has built up an impressive comic CV over the three years she has been doing stand-up with appearances on all the mainstream shows, including QI, Live At The Apollo, Never mind The Buzzcocks, Would I Lie To You and Celebrity Squares. Last year she collected the British Comedy Award for Best Female TV Comedian after winning the So You Think You’re Funny Award at Edinburgh the previous year. The Irish Tattler even named her it’s Entertainment Women of the Year in 2013.

Prior to her stint in Edinburgh, Aisling did some Fringe foreplay at London’s Leicester Square Theatre, where I left this sketch for her to sign.’Bea’ is actually her stage name, a homage to her late father-B for Brian-which she adopted at drama school because their was already an Aisling O’Sullivan. If you want to catch her live, ‘bea’ at the Leicester Square Theatre on Monday 14 September when she joins Jo Brand, Mae Martin, Kerry Godliman, Sara Pascoe and a host of others in Funny Ha Ha for the Live Life Safe campaign and the Suzy Lamplugh Trust or two days later in the Big Top at the Greenwich Comedy Festival.

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.