Pete Hartley: sometime dramaturg, perennial scribbler
From the Witchwood is a mesmeric musical forest. It is of its time but has enough validity to stand contemporary playing. Sadly, there are songs on here that still need singing for the worst of reasons, but joyfully there are others that can be sung because they are stunningly delightful.
Just a Collection of Antiques and Curios is a unique artefact in several ways. It is a live album like no other, in that is truly cohesive in style, mood and configuration, yet it is not a repressing of ‘greatest hits’, nor is it a crowd-pleasing indulgence. It is much closer to a proms concert … Continue reading Antiques, Curios and collectable dreams
Gypsy at the Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester, December 2019. The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester is a theatrical womb that can always be trusted to serve up high-quality festivities, and this Yuletide’s production of Gypsy with its cornucopia of song, gags, costumes, amusing knick-knacks and family rows suits the season of enforced conviviality very well. … Continue reading Keeping Mum
An appreciation of The Wichita Lineman and of Dylan Jones' book about it Anyone who has ever had creative work rejected should take great encouragement from a song that most industry ‘experts’ would have instantly thrown aside. It has just sixteen lines, two verses, no proper chorus, and by the songwriter’s own admission was rushed … Continue reading A lineman for all seasons
Back to Bretton for the first time in nine years.
Arresting.
Sculpture can be startling, stimulating, enchanting. It can turn you into stone.
A review (Blackpool Grand Theatre, Friday 9th August 2019) For seven consecutive years in the 1960s my childhood holidays were spent in Lytham St. Annes just sixteen miles from home. It may seem a raw deal when schoolmates would traverse the country, or set out on the first of the popular package holidays to that … Continue reading Around the World in 80s Days
One small doorstep delivery I do not remember where I was when JFK was shot, but I do remember where I was when his pledge to put a man on the Moon ‘in this decade’ was fulfilled. I was in the lounge of a customer of my father. My father was a self-employed milkman and … Continue reading Over the Moon on the milky way
A review of the touring production of Beautiful – The Carole King Musical With the passing of the analogue age it is unlikely that songs will ever dominate the combined consciousness as numerously as they did in the latter part of the twentieth century. Although audiences are much larger now, they not as universally imposed … Continue reading A few cross-stitches short of a tapestry
An appreciation of an unsung heroine and a review of her biography Imagine that, as a female secret agent in Nazi-occupied France, your three closest colleagues have been arrested and are due to face the firing squad tonight. Your one chance of saving them is to present yourself to the Gestapo interpreter, confess who you … Continue reading From Warsaw with love
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