Pete Hartley: sometime dramaturg, perennial scribbler
The most popular uneasywords of 2019 Another year of blogging done. Here, in reverse order, are the most popular uneasywords posts of 2019: At number 9 is a post from November 2018 explaining how the paintings of Jack Vettriano inspired a musical theatre show: Swinging with the Singing Butler. Number 8 is also … Continue reading Nine from ‘Nineteen
A ghost story for Christmas The bike growled as if in warning as he released his grip on the throttle. He braked gently expecting ice on the high moorland road. Freezing fog that night, the weatherman had said, and fog there was, and Mike was too wise to doubt the other part of the prophesy. … Continue reading Pillion
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
When my wife had a significant birthday several years ago, my gift to her was a DNA test. I’m an incorrigible romantic. Seriously, it was what she most wanted. Almost a decade later, she returned the favour and bought me one. It turns out we are related. We’ve got the same mother.
Back to Bretton for the first time in nine years. Arresting. Sculpture can be startling, stimulating, enchanting. It can turn you into stone.
How an iconic 1960s Preston night club became a musical.
From glitterballs to mothballs – an offstage rummage through four and a half decades of Preston Guild Hall.
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
She claimed that she could see the moon through her skin. Few believed her. Some had more buoyant benevolences, after all, who knew what she could do? Eseld was unlike anyone ever born to them, for she had no eyes.
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