Drawing: Kristin Scott Thomas in The Audience

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Kristen Scott Thomas

Dame Kristin Scott Thomas completed her three-month role as Queen Elizabeth ll in Peter Morgan’s hit production The Audience, directed by Stephen Daldry at London’s Apollo Theatre on Saturday evening. The play received it’s world premiere next door at the Gielgud in February 2013, with Dame Helen Mirren in the lead role. It’s inspired by the Queen’s private weekly meetings with all of Britain’s Prime Ministers during her six decades on the throne. This quick revival was updated to include the recent UK General Election, opening two days before polling. Apparently auditions were held for an ‘Ed Miliband’ just in case, but in response to the results, Morgan rewrote the scene between the Monarch and David Cameron (Mark Dexter). Coinciding with this production, Dame Helen was reprising the royal role at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on Broadway. It finished it’s season at the end of June, with Helen winning every major award, including the Tony. Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph wrote, “Scott Thomas is a match for Mirren,’ a sentiment matched by the majority of critics and theatre-goers alike. Just weeks before embarking on her portrayal, Kristin had first-hand experience of her subject when she meet the Queen to receive her damehood for services to drama. Kristin recalled the conversation in an interview afterwards and said the Queen asked her what she was doing next. After being told she replied, ‘It would be quite q challenge.”

Waiting at stage doors on final nights can be drawn out affairs, so I didn’t have my drawing out when Dame Kristin was super quick to appear to a sizeable gathering of her ‘subjects’, She chatted amongst them and signed items which gave me time to get it ready and queue for the royal siggy of approval.

Sketch: Edward Fox in The Audience at the Gielgud Theatre

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Peter Morgan’s The Audience premiered in the West End at the Gilegud Theatre on 15 February 2013, directed by Stephen Daldry. The play centres around weekly meetings called ‘audiences’ between the Queen anad her prime ministers, from her accession in 1952 to the present. Helen Mirren won the Olivier, Evening Standard and WhatsOnStage awards for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II.

Originally playing the role of Winston Churchill was Robert Hardy, but he withdrew before Press night, due to a fall cracking his ribs, and was replaced by Edward Fox.

Winner of two BAFTA Awards in The Go-Between (1970) and A Bridge Too Far (1977), Edward’s distinguished acting career dates back to his stage debut in 1958 and his first film appearance was as an extra in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962).

Arguably his defining role was the silent assassin in Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 thriller The Day Of The Jackal.

This a a 4B pencil portrait of Edward in his Churchillian pose, which he signed for me at a crowded stage door early in the run.

Drawing: Haydn Gwynne as Margaret Thatcher in The Audience

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Britain’s ‘Iron Lady’ died yesterday.The former and first (and only) female British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher’s passing has bought mixed reactions in the UK. Tony and Olivier nominated actress, Haydn Gwynne currently portrays her in Peter Morgan’s new play, THE AUDIENCE at the Gielgud Theatre. “I don’t know many people who would be neutral about Margaret Thatcher,” she wrote in the programme. “Everything about her was antithetical to what I believe in,but I would never play her through a filter of my own view of her…it’s not what is required. The weird thing is that, as soon as you are asked to play someone like this-and of course I watched bits of footage and read her biography and memoirs-you stop judging.”

I was going to do a sketch of Haydn anyway, along with other cast members,so it seemed appropriate to whip one up and have it signed by the Thatcher ‘stage surrogate’ on the day of Maggie’s passing. It was a surreal atmosphere around the stage door as cast and crew filtered in,with the occasional comment about ‘the event’ of the day. I missed Haydn going in, but did get to meet Peter Morgan,who signed my programme which was a bonus.

Everyone left relatively quickly after the performance and the group gathered at the exit soon dispersed once Dame Helen drove off, leaving only me, Phil, the stage door manager and one or two patrons from the gay bar opposite who had popped out for a ciggy….oh and the guy who feeds the pigeons. Haydn finally appeared around 10.45 and looked surprised..that someone was still waiting,let alone with a sketch. “I guess it must have been an interesting night?” I said. “Very interesting”, she replied. She liked the drawing-thought it was a nice touch and the poignancy of the moment felt as she signed it with a spirit-based sharpie.

Drawing: Helen Mirren as The Queen in The Audience

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

In 2006 Dame Helen Mirren won 29 major awards for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in the film The Queen, including the Oscar, Golden Globe, SAG and BAFTA Awards for Best Actress.

In April this year she once again reprised the role for the stage production of Peter Morgan’s (who also wrote The Queen) world premiere of The Audience at the Gielgud in Shaftesbury Ave.

For the last sixty one years, the Queen has met with 12 Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace. Both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said… not even to their spouces. The Audience breaks that code of silence and imagines a series of pivotal meetings, charting an arc through the second Elizabethan Age. Prime Ministers come and go through the revolving door of politics, while she remains constant.

The Audience opened to critical acclaim, and is nominated for five Laurence Olivier Awards, including a Best Actress nod for Dame Helen.

She is always very accommodating with autograph requests. If she doesn’t sign in person, the stage-door manager takes material to her. My programme was signed when she was leaving after an evening performance, but I left the sketch at the theatre. When time is limited and there are gazillions of graphs to do, she has abbreviate to ‘H. Mirren” so I was please to get a full signature and the customary wavy underline. I wonder if Elizabeth R will take in the play, after all she and Philip did go to War Horse and did invite Dame Helen to dinner at the Palace in May 2007.