Drawing: James McAvoy and Claire Foy in Macbeth

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Glasgow-born James McAvoy has just completed the lead role in a sell out season of ‘the Scottish play’, with English actress Claire Foy as Lady Macbeth.

After an eighty day run as London’s Trafalgar Studios, James goes straight into filming the next instalment of X Men alongside the two Knights, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, who have both also starred as the murdering Scot. James commented that it would be fun having three Macbeths in the one place “We might have a Macbeth-off – my Macbeth’s better than your Macbeth!”

The production received rave reviews, but the interaction with the audience didn’t always go to script. He suddenly stopped mid-scene when someone in the front was filming with his mobile phone. He refused to continue with the play until the device was firmly put away. James also stopped in the middle of the climatic sword fight to help an audience member who had collapsed. He called for help, cracked a joke or two, then continued the scene with the same intensity, according to one witness who tweeted the event. On another occasion, he told two drunk women who kept talking through the early scenes to “shut up”. They eventually complied and later fell asleep.

When he signed my sketch, going in for the Friday evening’s performance, he was telling the gathered ‘graphers that he had injured an eye and his hand due to the intense physicality of the play. Luckily it was his left hand, so he could still sign!

Drawings: Prunella Scales and Connie Booth

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

I left this drawing of Prunella Scales at the stage door of the Apollo Theatre, London, where she was performing Carrie’s War in July 2009. It was returned to me, signed, through the mail.

I also received my Connie Booth sketch signed back through the mail. She now works as a psychotherapist in London, after ending her acting career in 1995. I sent the sketch to her North London clinic. She very rarely signs, and had declined to talk about Fawlty Towers for 30 years until she had agreed to participate in a documentary about the series in 2009, so I was very happy to get it back signed and dedicated.

Drawing: Michael Crawford in The Wizard of Oz

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

I sent this drawing to Michael Crawford at The London Palladium while he was playing the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. It came back through the post with this letter:

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.

Drawing: Ben Whishaw and Judi Dench in Peter and Alice

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

The Michael Grandage Company’s second of five theatrical treats at the Noel Coward Theatre is Peter and Alice written by John Logan, it’s a moving study of enchanchment and reality after a brief encounter between the real-life models for Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, laying bare the lives of two extraordinary characters shaped by JM Barrie and Lewis Carroll. The actual fleeting meeting took place at a literary event in 1932, when Alice Liddell Hargreaves was 80 and Peter Lleweullyn Davies was 35. Logan speculates on their imagined conversations, looking at how we are all shaped by our childhoods. The children who inspired two classics meet as emotionally bruised adults in a dusty old bookstore and explore their views of past relationships with the authors and the price that they have paid when fame is foisted on the child heroine and the boy who never grew up. It is a tale of two tortured souls with Peter struggling the most with the unwanted fame. “I think I know what childhood is for. It’s to give us a bank of happy memories against future suffering.”

Alice passed away peacefully and contented, Peter committed suicide, throwing himself under a train in Sloane Square. The principle characters are played by Dame Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw – transferring ‘M’ and ‘Q’ from the screen to Wonderland and Neverland from the recent Bond film Skyfall (also written by John Logan).

Both actors are terrific on stage and off stage. They are great signers, but the problem is that they leave at opposite ends of the theatre. Alice through the front looking glass (barriered) and Peter flies out the back. In order to avoid having to go back twice, signature strategy requires some prior intelligence. My spies told me that Ben usually exits first, then the mob hot foot it to the front of the theatre for Dame Judi. And that’s exactly what happened. As all good bedtime stories should finish.

Drawing: Martin Freeman in Clybourne Park at Royal Court Theatre

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

The Moêt British Independent Film Awards were held at the Old Billingsgate Fish Market in the Shadow of Tower Bridge in December 2010. This time I was on the other side, covering the event for the Irish World – always awkward asking for ‘graphs when you’re interviewing the stars and supping on the sponsor’s product!

However, Martin is one of us: normal, nice and no expletives deleted. I had a couple of sketches on me from his role in the award winning Royal Court play Clybourne Park.

As a member of the forth estate one has to remain professional at all times… so I politely showed Martin the sketches and and said I could send them to his agent. He said “I’ll save you the stamps,” and we had a brief chat about his upcoming trip to Middle Earth (New Zealand) to play Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson‘s Hobbit.

As I write this, I discover that Martin has just won the Best Actor perspex trophy at the Empire Film Awards across town at the Grosvenor Hotel, for his Hobbit role, beating Lincoln and James Bond (Daniel Day Lewis and Daniel Craig).

Drawing: Sir Ian McKellen in Waiting for Godot at Haymarket Theatre Royal

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Yes, Gandalf himself, Sir Ian McKellen signed for me in February 2010. He was performing in Waiting for Godot at the Haymarket Theatre Royal. Lovely man, great play.

Drawing: Alison Steadman, Ruthie Henshall, Hermione Norris and Robert Bathurst in Blithe Spirit

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

One of the classic stage doors is the Apollo Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue (not the stage door, the theatre. The stage door is round the back in Archer Street). It’s opposite the White Horse pub and the home of 6 million pigeons (someone keeps feeding them). It is quintessential West End, flanked by the Gielgud and Lyric Theatres bordering on Soho.

A revival of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit had transferred there after a regional tour in 2010. Alison Steadman had signed the single sketch for me a couple of weeks earlier and I left her a copy. She was talking to the guy who feeds the pigeons, so I asked if she could sign the cast sketch. She was more than happy to, saying “we all really love your work, it’s excellent, thank you,” which was nice to hear.

Ruthie Henshall was already in… in fact, if I went to the first floor of the White Horse I would be on the same level as her dressing room and could get her attention… but no, that could lead to a conviction. Ruthie, apart from being a West End and Broadway star, dated Prince Edward “solidly for two years, on and off for five years”. Because it wasn’t public knowledge she was often ‘smuggled’ into Buckingham Palace. The relationship ended because she didn’t want to give up her career, but she did attend the Prince’s wedding to Sophie Rhys Jones in 1999.

TV star Hermione Norris was on her phone to a family member (I guessed), so I waited, but she multitasked and signed while she was still talking. I apologised, but she said, “not a problem,” and went inside. Very nice lady.

Her Cold Feet co-star Robert Bathurst is usually the last… and late. “He bikes,” said the stage door manager. Now, that’s running a few gauntlets at that time of night in the heart of London. But his understudy was reprieved again and he arrived in tact. He duly signed and wheeled his bike into the theatre.

Since it was a very pleasant May evening I ensconced myself at the White Horse to partake of their hospitality until the show ended and Ruthie left in the conventional manner (not needing to employ the covert operations of her royal courtship days). I got her coming out, so to speak, to complete the set.

Drawing: Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act at London Palladium

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Caryn Elaine Johnson, better known as Whoopi Goldberg, made her West End debut at the London Palladium, playing the Mother Superior in the musical version of Sister Act for a limited run during August 2010. Now, the London Palladium is not stalker friendly. It has two stage doors – light years apart… well, far enough to create a massive inconvenience that not even Usain Bolt could cover in the required time. Then, of course there is the front door. Add to that – Whoopi had no arrival or departure pattern and her car… or cars… didn’t always drive in from the direction of her digs.

All intelligence, and I use the term reservedly, suggested that the back stage door (as opposed to the main Great Marlborough Street one) was the one to target with a window of two hours going in.

Whoopi used a variety of cars, but there’s only one Whoopi Goldberg, so forget the vehicle, stay focussed on the passenger. Crowds gathered at all doors, some waiting all day. I got to know a few of them after five attempts.

I had virtually given up and resigned to leaving the sketch at the theatre for a through-the-mail reply. I was walking from Mayfair, through Soho to Charing Cross Station, not intending to stop by the theatre… but for some reason (addiction) found myself back there. Five minutes later Whoopi arrived at the back door, loved the sketch, happily signed and strolled into the Palladium to don the habit!

And, as a bonus, I also got the drawing below back through-the-mail.