Stan Graham's Leisure Guide for North and West Yorkshire
This was a very fitting title for the last show I will be covering before Christmas. Next Friday, strikes permitting, I am going into hospital for a knee replacement, so one week on I will be Stick Man, probably Two Stick Man, Crutch Man, but we won’t go there, or even Dylan, the real name…
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Three Prime Ministers, two Monarchs, strikes and a pending nuclear war. What do we want to end the year – PANTO! Oh yes we really do! If ever we needed to forget everything and revert to childhood for a couple of hours then the time is now. Simon Nock and his cohorts were back to…
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The nearest I have come to anything by the author of the book on which this musical was based is as a foodie. Pork Chops Victor Hugo was one of my specialities and always got a good reaction. The one afforded to Les Misérables was not too shabby either, with the audience in raptures at…
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Although this is a children’s classic, it is one of those books which I have never read, being first published in the UK in 1964 and, as a 15 year-old at the time, I had other things on my mind. Also, having no offspring, I didn’t get to read it as a parent. This show…
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It seems that the only sopranos I haven’t met this week are the ones who would fit me with a concrete overcoat and take me swimming in the Hudson River. Tonight it was the turn of Katherine Broderick to impress me with her vocal prowess, along with pianist Kathryn Scott and Paul Whittaker who translated…
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What better way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon in Leeds than in Howard Assembly Room being serenaded by two brilliant sopranos. Daisy Brown and Fflur Wyn have been appearing in Opera North’s production of Orfeo ed Euridice, which I reviewed at the end of last month, so I was looking forward to seeing them…
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It is so hard to write a review for a show with a name like this without including a load of piscine related puns, but I will try my best. No I won’t. This is nothing more nor less than a feel-good show comprised almost entirely of sea shanties, both traditional and new, with the…
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Here I am again at the wonderful Howard Assembly Room. I am not complaining, you understand, quite the opposite, the place has expanded my musical knowledge beyond all expectations. This evening we left the world of experimentation behind for a concert of works by Beethoven, Haydn and an encore from Elgar. The Doric String Quartet…
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I must admit to having a soft spot for this musical. In 1958, when I was eight years old, it was the first film I went to see with both my mum and dad. My mum used to take me to the local flea pit every Wednesday evening for the early performance as she worked…
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To quote from the blurb on Howard Assembly Room’s website for this event, ‘Unquiet is the progressive new live experience devised by acclaimed conductor and composer Robert Ames and brought to life by the world renowned Manchester Camerata alongside a rotating cast of artists’. Can’t argue with that. Manchester Camerata’s website describes it as ‘A…
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Tyke It To The Limit 