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.

Drawing: Iliza Shlesinger in Freezing Hot

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

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

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

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: Caroline Wozniacki

Posted on August 22, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

caroline woz

The amiable Danish tennis player Caroline Wozniacki held the WTA number one ranking for 67 weeks, a position she held year end for two consecutive years in 2010 and 2011. She was the first Scandinavian woman to hold the top spot and the 20th overall. Caroline’s game is based on a strong defensive playing style described as a “counter puncher”.

Her two handed backhand is her key weapon, tuning defence into attack, a vital component in her 23 singles title victories. She has yet to win her first Grand Slam but has featured twice in the US Open final, most recently losing the 2014 decider to close friend Serena Williams. ‘Caro’ is currently 5th in the WTA rankings.

She also ran the New York City Marathon in November last year, in a time of 3:26:33, which was good enough to qualify for next year’s Boston Marathon, but said it will be a few years before she takes on another 26 mile and 385 yard event again. She’s also a huge fan of the English Premiere League team Liverpool FC.

While I’ve managed to collect Caroline’s graph in person I haven’t been able to get a sketch signed… until now. Mainly because on the occasions I’ve met her, I didn’t have a drawing to sign.

I sent a sketch to her at the Eastbourne Tournament in June, where she reached the semis, but nothing came back. But the time I made it to Wimbledon a couple of weeks later, she had lost her fourth round match, so I missed out again. Another sig-stalker in the US stepped in to assist, getting this signed for me at the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford, California this month.

Ever popular, she attracted a large group of admirers, so he couldn’t get a dedication, but I was pleased with the result.

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

Posted on August 21, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

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

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

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

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

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

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

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

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

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.