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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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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I’ve always enjoyed a good after hours session but it has usually meant a lock-in at the local pub for a couple more illicit pints, tonight, however, it was a much more sophisticated affair being the launch of Royal Armouries Gin. Not only that, but the chaps at Rolling Social, Lee and Ben, had devised…
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Another first for me, the opening night of a sculpture exhibition. The subtitle is Race, Sexuality and Disorder in Victorian Sculpture so pretty intriguing. Fortunately we were treated to an introduction to the works on show by Laurence Sillars, Head of the Henry Moore Institute, who said that the exhibits raised questions about the Victorians’…
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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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Those guardians of our heritage, The Royal Armouries, are mixing up something special on Wednesday 30th November at their dockside home. The event will be the first ever after-hours opening and is being done in conjunction with Rolling Social Events, the people behind the Corn Exchange Christmas Market and the various spirit festivals. The reason…
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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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Tyke It To The Limit 