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…
Read More
Please note: this event has been postponed until the New Year. I will bring you details when I get them. 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…
Read More
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,…
Read More
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,…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
Tyke It To The Limit 