Stan Graham's Leisure Guide for North and West Yorkshire
The first theatre review I ever wrote was for Leeds Living about a ‘thriller’ at Leeds Grand Theatre. The play was terrible and so I submitted it to the copy editor with a covering email saying that I didn’t mind if they didn’t want to use it, but it was my honest opinion and so…
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I always find it odd watching the wonderful Mikron theatre company perform at this venue. Not because there is anything strange about either organisation – well, not much – but Mikron is a bunch of travelling performers who set up their stage in various venues, mostly using their trusty narrowboat, Tyseley, to get them around…
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I have immense admiration for people who have a vision and the commitment to follow it through to fruition. Such is the case of Andrew McNicol, who wanted to shake up the UK ballet scene by ‘incorporating diverse artistic perspectives and global innovations, promoting Ballet’s enduring vitality, power and relevance.’ I have no doubt that…
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Now I don’t know about you, but I do admire an actor who can cook egg and chips while delivering a two-hour monologue. Sadly, she didn’t hand the fries round at the interval, but I’ll forgive her for that, as she had other things on her plate. Like a lot of people, I have seen…
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Now here’s a novel idea. To celebrate 40 years of this iconic musical, Music Theatre International and Cameron Mackintosh Limited decided to allow amateur organisations to perform the show for the first time. Rather than just release the score, directions and other elements of the West End production to all and sundry, they chose eleven…
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I think that the cushiest job on the stage must be the part of the Pharaoh in this musical. You can spend the first half in the Green Room with your feet up and then pop on to do your feature number, have another cup of tea slip on for a couple of cameos and…
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It was back to basics last night with a play from ThickSkin and Pentabus, written by Tim Foley, called – you guessed it – Driftwood. Although pared down in the production department, it still had some very imaginative video effects, sound and lighting, powerfully getting the message across. The work is about two brothers and…
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Jane Eyre was not a novel on the reading list of a slum kid from East Leeds in the 1950s even though it was written by a Yorkshirewoman about an orphan girl who grew up in hardship. My first encounter with Ms Eyre was a television adaptation in 1963 on a small black and white…
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The night before I saw this production I had been to a show which had spawned a Netflix series, tonight I thought I might be in for the reverse, an Amazon Prime programme adapted for the stage. I quite like Jeremy Clarkson so was agog with anticipation. Not for the first time in my life…
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I was not familiar with this work until I saw the Leeds Playhouse website, telling me that it had spawned a tv series, so I took a sneaky peek at the show on Netflix. Rather than start at Episode 1, which I thought would just be a scene setter, I skipped to the third one…
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Tyke It To The Limit 