Stan Graham's Leisure Guide for North and West Yorkshire
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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Back at the beginning of April I went to the launch of LIFI23, you can work out what that stands for by looking at the title of this piece, where we were given the rundown of events taking place. As happens in life, stuff changes, and there have been a couple of tweaks to the…
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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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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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In my last review from Howard Assembly Room I ventured to suggest that the featured artist, Ron Sexsmith was a really decent kind of chap. I will not make the same speculation about tonight’s artist, Jasdeep Singh Degun, as I have had the privilege of meeting him on a few occasions and I can testify…
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Tyke It To The Limit 