Stan Graham's Leisure Guide for North and West Yorkshire
What a surprise, well, two surprises really. I was sitting at home on Thursday, minding my own business, for once, when I received a mystery email from Sherin Sara Alex at South Asian Arts asking if I would like to join them for a concert at Seven Arts in Chapel Allerton the following evening. After…
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Well, it seems that my rethink on stage musicals adapted from the film versions has paid off, in that I now ‘get’ the formula; dumb down on the story and concentrate on the music. The problem here is that there are no blockbuster songs, except for Love Is In The Air, which doesn’t surface until…
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Back in the 1990s it was not uncommon for a group of colleagues to pop into Jacob’s Well – yes, I did work in Bradford – for a relaxing pint or two of proper beer after a hard day drinking tea. One evening there were some people in a corner who were obviously in the…
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I think that I will need to reassess my attitude regarding stage musicals adapted from films. Having seen a couple over the past two weeks without witnessing the cinema versions I didn’t realise that the plot purposely comes a distant second in importance to the music. The musicals I have watched at the Grand which…
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In 1937 – even before my time – the American singer, Sophie Tucker, made a record called Life Begins At Forty. When it comes to Sunita’s big four-O, however, it isn’t just her for whom life kicks-off. Sunita, played by Bhawna Bhawsar, is celebrating her fortieth birthday, well, actually she is trying not to celebrate…
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2023 will probably go down in the annals of the wonderful Grand Theatre as the year of the adapted screen musicals. We have already had Sister Act and Dirty Dancing with The Commitments and Strictly Ballroom still to come. So far the ones I have seen remained true to the original but The Bodyguard seems…
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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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Tyke It To The Limit 