Stan Graham's Leisure Guide for North and West Yorkshire
I can’t believe that it is over three years since I saw this show at Leeds Playhouse, how time flies when you are in a pandemic. In the interim it has undergone a total cast change and, after touring the country’s theatres, it has enjoyed a successful run in the West End. This production has…
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What better way can there be to spend a sunny spring morning than with a walk round the best city in the world in the company of the amazing cellist, Abel Selaocoe along with members of the Orchestra and Chorus of Opera North. The heads of the early bird shoppers were definitely turned! OK, they…
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Now here’s a novelty, Mikron Theatre Company performing in a real theatre! They normally put on their shows in the most unlikely places such as allotments, museums (should that be musea?), pubs, village halls, allotments and even a lifeboat station. I have seen two of their productions before, one in a working men’s club (the…
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After a break in proceedings I returned to the fold to see the touring production of Sister Act. As it happens, the musical has also had an enforced hiatus so we both resumed normal service together. Actually, it wasn’t quite normal service for either of us as the show began, and ended, 20 minutes late…
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In the programme the director, Radula Gaitanou, says she wishes that opera were more like football, with the audience not knowing the outcome until the end. Well, she certainly walked the walk in this production, turning it into a game of two halves and, not until the penalty shoot-out at the end, do we find…
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RIOPY, birth name Jean-Phillippe Rio-Py, like a lot of the performers I have seen at Howard Assembly Room, was someone I had not heard of before my visit. He is a French pianist and composer who has the most amazing back story. He was raised in a secular cult in France and taught himself to…
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I think that I have discovered a new hero, Leoš Janáček, the man responsible for the work currently being performed by Opera North at Leeds Grand Theatre. He has made my list of good guys on two counts; firstly he has broken the mould when it comes to the practice of anthropomorphism, and secondly, he…
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Last year’s concert held to mark Holocaust Memorial Day was focussed on the works of three composers who perished in one of the most reviled concentration camps during the Second World War, this year the spotlight shifted to the lives of ‘ordinary’ people – the clue is in the title. Although the object was to…
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After a mini lockdown due to my recovering from a knee replacement operation and the lack of new shows opening since Christmas, it was great to get back to the beautiful Grand Theatre for a classic opera, albeit in modern dress – both the opera and me. As usual, the work covered love, betrayal, murder,…
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Sunday evening was very strange. I got on the bus to take me to Leeds, which it did, but it also seemed to have transported me back to 1973! As with any decade the music was, shall we say, of variable quality and this concert by Jesca Hoop reminded me that there was a school…
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Tyke It To The Limit 