Stan Graham's Leisure Guide for North and West Yorkshire
Opera North are at it again, bringing opera to people who would not normally experience it and what a great choice. There can have been no more appropriate work to air on the weekend of the G7 Summit on Climate Change. As the name suggests, there is a green message in this work, not only…
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It’s been a funny old day. A couple of years ago I went on a ghost walk around Leeds and one of the stops was the City Varieties Music Hall where someone hanged himself in the roof void during a performance of a play in the theatre and his likeness has been patrolling the place…
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It is not often that I come home after spending part of the morning being spoken to by a bridge. If you are going to have a river crossing talk to you then you could do worse than make it Crown Point Bridge. This area is the hub of the Leeds waterway. The River Aire,…
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I have missed out on the events in this year’s Compass Festival as I was unable to travel into Leeds due to the recent restrictions so it was good to be able to experience their latest offering in Trinity Kitchen. Anxiety Arcade is a replica 1980s games machine which were a familiar sight in pubs,…
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I am not normally a joiner, no I don’t mean that my woodworking is useless – although it is, but I am with Groucho Marx when it comes to belonging to a group he said that he would never care to join a club which would accept him as a member. Last week, however, I…
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Life took another small step towards normality on Friday 16th April with the launch of a new weekly event known as Friday Social at The Tetley. I managed to book a table and so went along to see what it was like. I have felt somewhat left out of things insofar as the offerings in…
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How about a trip to The Tetley this Easter. OK, we can’t go in person just yet, but thanks to modern technology, we can have a private viewing of this new exhibition by Mel Brimfield. I’m not talking about a series of photographs of the items on display but a 3D interactive tour complete with…
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No, I haven’t changed my spell checker to the Italian version, I thought it appropriate to bid one of Leeds’ favourite regular events a warm welcome back. On 4th November last year I was covering a performance at Leeds Playhouse which didn’t begin until 8.00pm and so I thought that I would kill two birds…
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After Fidelio and La Petite Bohème, Opera North’s third Christmas streaming is the perennial favourite, Cinderella. This is not the big budget blockbuster with an eighty piece orchestra and a Grand Ball scene to rival that of any Hollywood extravaganza of the 1930s, no, this is the Whistle Stop version comprising three actors, a piano…
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What would Christmas be without a dose of Dickens? Probably a lot merrier! Although the theme of the novel is one of redemption, it is still a dark work and not the stuff of sleigh rides and jingle bells. This interpretation, however, has jollied it up but I fear that it has dropped down the…
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