Stan Graham's Leisure Guide for North and West Yorkshire
Never have I been to a piece of theatre where the storyline has been so irrelevant. I will provide a synopsis later, but the whole production revolved around the uber hunk which is Michael O’Reilly, who played Johnny Castle. You could have cut the pheromones with a knife. The largely female audience had come to…
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My musical education was advanced even further on Thursday evening with another visit to the splendid Howard Assembly Room. Tonight’s lesson was The Music and Instruments of Mali with the teacher being Bassekou Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba. If all of my academic instructions had been presented like this, I would have left school…
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Another example of the impact a playwright can have when connecting with their audience. This time it wasn’t me and the effect was even greater. The play, adapted for stage by Nesrin Alrefaai and Matthew Spangler, from a book by Christy Lefteri who, my research tells me, spent two summers working in a refugee camp…
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What a fabulous evening at Leeds Grand Theatre for this production of Mozart’s Requiem and After Tears: After A Requiem by Neo Muyanga. It wasn’t opera in its usual sense, more a concert piece by Opera North combined with the Phoenix Dance Theatre, Jazzart Dance Theatre and Cape Town Opera. You would have thought that…
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I don’t think that I have ever had such a difficult time watching a play, especially one with a comic element. I had to take a moment or two to gather myself before I could leave my seat at the interval. Causing me to be late for a free glass of red wine at half…
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There can be few better places, or should that be plaices, to watch a show than in a world renown fish and chip restaurant. I thought that last year’s production at The Wetherby Whaler, formerly the original Harry Ramsden, by Mikron Theatre Company would be a one-off but to my surprise, and not a little…
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For anyone wondering whether to see an opera I think that The Pearl Fishers, by that most accessible of composers, Bizet, illustrates why you should give it a go. I would wager that there were quite a few newbies in the audience on Press Night as, after each aria, there was a short smattering of…
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It was in the spring of 1989 that I fulfilled a long-held ambition to visit California and take a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco to San Diego. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get the holiday snaps out, I am only telling you this because one of my stops on the…
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Calling all parents! If you have a child who is interested in a musical career and wants to learn an instrument, might I suggest that you buy them a violin. This is the third concert I have been to this week where a string quartet has been featured, so the employment prospects can’t be all…
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It was great to be back at the wonderful Howard Assembly Room after a three-month enforced break. No, I wasn’t banned, although goodness knows why not. Anyway, the reason I was there was to get back into the swing of things by seeing David Brewis perform his new album, The Soft Struggles. I have to…
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Tyke It To The Limit 