In Town Today 7th October 2010

In Town Today Thursday 7th October 2010 by Biztalkradio on Mixcloud

So much has happened and so little time to put it together for you my listeners.

Another Opening! Another Show! The Grand Theatre, Swansea is always busy and

Swansea Women is the new musical written, directed and produced by Swansea women with Swansea actors.

Written and composed by Lyn MacKay it is based on life in Sandfields, Swansea during the forties and is based on historic accuracies. Lyn spent hours checking the details and talking with people who were around at the time.

It is the the story of 3 generations and a prequel to Swansea Girls that Lyn wrote 3 years ago.

Directed by Katherine Price, it was an experience just watching her working on the fine detail for the finale.

Produced by Nia Trussler Jones who was also in the cast along with her mother Menna and son Oliver: probably the first time 3 generations of one family have appeared at the Grand Theatre together. All have appeared in other productions and you'll know Menna from Little Britain.

 

In Town Today are proud to have interviews with others involved in this production including Richard Burman who has appeared in shows in London's West End and our much loved Kevin Johns who we'll look forward to seeing in the pantomime Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs again at the Grand Theatre.

The photo on the right shows the cast in the final rehearsal before moving into the Grand theatre. It's a great shame that so much effort isn't going to be staged again in the near future in Swansea or worse in London's est End where it would stand up against other shows there.

Now the pantomime starts at the Grand theatre on 15th December and runs on until mid January.

I was invitd to the Press Call at the Grand and interviewd the cast. Keep listening and you'll hear those interviews over the following weeks.

Whatever your age I'm sure you  can look back to a great show around Christmas. Anyone who hasn't experienced a pantomime is missing out on one of those great British traditions.

There's a great line-up again this year and you can't book early enough so why not phone the Grand Theatre and make a booking - treat the family.

Watch out for some great interviews.

Tm Kelly started painting just six years ago as a hobby and today has an extensive exhibition showing at the Grand Theatre.

The three pictures to the left are digitalised photograhs of Swansea landmarks. Can you identify them?


Tim uses all types of media, takinmg advantage of modern materials and ideas and mixing them with tradition.

 

 Andrew Penhale is a male model. He enjoys playing all Sports, especially Rugby. He has fantastic and some professional modelling experienceworking for Aussie Bum Underwear: Advertising underwear for Aussie Bum, Llan Llyr Source: Advertising Llan Llyr Source bottled water (Water originates from a source in Lampeter, Wales and is sold in hotels in L.A.), Powerade: Recently filmed an advert for Powerade Sports drink with British Lions and Wales Rugby star Shane Williams. (Due to go onto the Powerade website and waiting for images), LAB Series: Worked with Debenhams, promoting Estee Lauder, LAB Series Skincare for men range. Photographs taken by www.lifephotographywales.com and mattreardonphotography.com, Olorun and Engage: Advertising for a new up and coming Rugby Sportswear company called Engage and Olorun. Since Canterbury Euorope have gone bust, Olorun and Engage's orders for kit etc has gone through the roof! Debenhams: Catwalk modelling in a charity event in Swansea Rugby Club arranged by Debenhams Swansea using a range of different outfits that are sold with in the store.

He works with Model Click: Recently featured in the new Style Wales magazine out in South Wales representing Model Click. Swansea Life Magazine: Modelled for Swansea Life Magazine in the February issue on the Valentines feature they published with another female model. Recently shot for the Swansea Life Calendar 2011 which will be for sale in December. He had to enter a competition then be chosen by six judges from the Shoot Swansea event out of over 40 finalists.

 He is currently shooting with a cosmetics company known as: Renew U ( Health Solutions ). They have contacted me to be the face of the Men’s side of the company. Advertising the range of treatments available for Men. Swansea One Card: He is one of the faces of the new Swansea One Privileges Card that has recently been launched in Swansea, Wales.

He has worked with a range of professional photographers: (Life Photography Wales, Ajay Fotography, Christopher Barroccu Photography. LindsPics.com and mattreardonphotography.com ).

Andrew says " I am an experienced model who loves to contribute with my own ideas to a shoot / job and always give 100% so a job is finished with perfection. I am friendly, easygoing, hard working and very reliable. I am available for all types of assignments from my various areas of interest. I am very experienced, even at a professional level (with the companies i have worked with above) and enjoy advertising products. I do not mind negotiating with photographers/companies ,but generally work for pay"

In Town Today 23rd Septermber 2010

Another Opening! Another Show! The Grand Theatre, Swansea is always busy and

Swansea Women is the new musical written, directed and produced by Swansea women with Swansea actors.

Written and composed by Lyn MacKay it is based on life in Sandfields, Swansea during the forties and is based on historic accuracies. Lyn spent hours checking the details and talking with people who were around at the time.

It is the the story of 3 generations and a prequel to Swansea Girls that Lyn wrote 3 years ago.

Directed by Katherine Price, it was an experience just watching her working on the fine detail for the finale.

Produced by Nia Trussler Jones who was also in the cast along with her mother Menna and son Oliver: probably the first time 3 generations of one family have appeared at the Grand Theatre together. All have appeared in other productions and you'll know Menna from Little Britain.

In Town Today are proud to have interviews with others involved in this production including Richard Burman who has appeared in shows in London's West End and our much loved Kevin Johns who we'll look forward to seeing in the pantomime Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs again at the Grand Theatre.

In Town Today Thursday 19th August 2010

Sandra Dickinson is an American-British actress. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She has often played a dumb blonde with a high-pitched voice in the UK – notably commencing in the St. Bruno TV advertisements in the early 1970s.

Her roles include:

Trillian in the television version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Sandra Dickinson said in an interview in The Making of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy that when she heard that she had been suggested for the role of Trillian, she thought it completely mad - Sandra Dickinson was blond and fair-skinned, and in the Hitch Hiker book, Trillian is described as dark and looking "slightly Arabic". However, during the screen test, Douglas Adams was sufficiently impressed with her acting skills that when Dickinson suggested wryly, "I've got to get my Union Jack lenses in" (i.e., practice my English accent), Douglas Adams asked her to use her natural voice and accent. Dickinson later returned to the "Hitchhiker's" universe to play Tricia MacMillan in the fourth and fifth radio series produced by Above the Title for BBC Radio 4.

Emily in A Man for Emily in The Tomorrow People

Tina in the sitcom 2point4 children

A stage production of The Owl and the Pussycat, where the leads were herself and her then husband Peter Davison.

Barefoot in the Park - London stage production from 1984, again with Davison as a pair of American newlyweds adjusting to life in their new high-rise apartment.

A parallel universe version of Trillian (AKA Tricia McMillan) in the Quintessential Phase of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide radio series.

Zelda in Cover, a 1981 drama series from Thames Television, set in a recruitment and testing agency for the spy service.

Maggie in the 1996 Doctor Who BBC radio serial The Ghosts of N-Space.

Both Dickinson and then husband Peter Davison appeared together in former Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner's production of the holiday pantomime Cinderella in 1983.

Dickinson has also appeared in an episode of HBO's Tales from the Crypt series, also starring Malcolm McDowell as a neurotic vampire who prefers bloodbanks to actual victims.

Made a guest appearance in the BBC1 drama Casualty in February 2001, playing Debbie Hall, a tourist who arrives in Holby City Hospital with her husband, who has been stabbed by a mugger.

She has played Queen Camilla in Carlisle pantomime production of Snow White & the Seven Dwarves in 2007, and in 2008 she played Fairy Godmother at the Towngate Theatre Basildon's production of Cinderella & once again played Fairy Godmother in the Harlow Playhouse theatre production of Cinderella in 2009 alongside her now husband Mark Osmond.

Played Lady Gloria Gransford in New Tricks Season 6 episode 4 "Shadow Show" in 2009

[edit] Personal life

Dickinson was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Maryland. Her father, Harold S. Searles, was a psychoanalyst and her mother, Sylvia, was a nurse. In 1969, Dickinson met her first husband, Englishman Hugh Dickinson (whose surname she still uses as her stage name), moving to England with him the following year. They were married for five years. She married the English actor Peter Davison on 26 December 1978, and they were divorced in 1994. Together they composed and performed the theme tune to the 1980s children's programme Button Moon. They have a daughter, Georgia Moffett, born 25 December 1984, (who is also an actress), and a grandson, Tyler Moffett, born 27 March 2002.

Dickinson married her third husband, British actor Mark Osmond, on 16 August 2009. The wedding was filmed for a reality TV show where four couples compete to have theirs voted the best wedding; hers came third. Her grandson gave her away. The wedding took place in Shepperton, where the couple have lived since 2007. Dickinson became a British Citizen the same year, and also runs a theatre school there (which also has a base in Ealing) called the Close Up Theatre School.

Victor Spinelli was born in Cwm, Wales of Welsh and Italian heritage from a grandfather who was said to have walked from Italy to Wales to work as a coal miner. His parents, Giuseppe and Lily, owned the chip shop in Cwm, over which premises the family lived and where Spinetti was born. He was educated at Monmouth School and the Cardiff College of Music and Drama, of which he is now a fellow. Early on he was a waiter and a factory worker

He sprang to international prominence in three Beatles' films in the 1960s, A Hard Day's Night, Help! and Magical Mystery Tour. He also appeared on one of The Beatles' Christmas recordings. The best explanation for this long-running collaboration and friendship might have been provided by George Harrison, who said, "You've got to be in all our films ... if you're not in them me Mum won't come and see them—because she fancies you." But Harrison would also say, "You've got a lovely karma, Vic." Sir Paul McCartney described Spinetti as "the man who makes clouds disappear". Spinetti would later make a small appearance in the promotional video for Paul's song, 'London Town', off the 1978 album of the same name. Spinetti has appeared in more than 30 films, including Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew, Under Milk Wood with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Becket, Voyage of the Damned, The Return of the Pink Panther, Under the Cherry Moon and The Krays.

In the theatre his work in Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop produced many memorable performances including Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be (1959, by Frank Norman, with music by Lionel Bart), and Oh! What a Lovely War (1963), which transferred to New York City and for which he won a Tony Award for his main role as an obnoxious Drill Sergeant. He has appeared in the West End in The Odd Couple (as Felix); Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in the West End; as Albert Einstein in a critically lauded performance in 2005 in a new play, Albert's Boy at the Finborough Theatre in 2005 and in his own one-man show, A Very Private Diary.

One of Spinetti's most challenging theatre roles was as the principal male character in Jane Arden's radical feminist play Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven, which played to packed houses for six weeks at the Arts Lab on Drury Lane in 1969. In 1980 he directed The Biograph Girl, a musical about the silent film era, at the Phoenix Theatre. He has also appeared on Broadway in The Hostage and The Philanthropist. He has also acted with the Royal Shakespeare Company, in such roles as Lord Foppington in The Relapse and the Archbishop in Richard III.

Spinetti co-authored In His Own Write, the play with John Lennon which he also directed at the National Theatre, premiering on 18 June 1968, at the Old Vic. Spinetti and Lennon appeared together in June 1968 on BBC2's Release. During the interview, Spinetti said of the play,

"it's not really John’s childhood, it's all of ours really, isn’t it John?" John Lennon, assuming a camp voice answered "It is, we're all one Victor, we're all one aren't we. I mean 'what's going on?'" Spinetti said the play "is about the growing up of any of us; the things that helped us to be more aware".

He also directed Jesus Christ Superstar and Hair, including productions staged in Europe. His many television appearances on British TV, include Take My Wife in which he played a London-based booking agent and schemer who was forever promising his comedian client that fame was just around the corner, and the sitcom An Actor's Life For Me. In September 2008 Spinetti reprised his one-man show, A Very Private Diary, touring the UK, as A Very Private Diary ... Revisted!, telling his life story.

Between 1969 and 1970 Spinetti appeared on Thames Television, alongside Sid James, as one half of Two In Clover over two series. A sitcom about two office workers who jack it all in to become farmers, he starred in all but one of the 13 episodes. His absence in episode #3 of the second series was covered by fellow Welsh actor Richard Davies, playing Spinetti's character's brother.

In the 1970s Spinetti appeared in a series of television advertisements for McVities' (now United Biscuits) Jaffa Cakes, as "The Mad Jaffa Cake Eater", a Mexican bandit style character who sureptitiously stole and ate other people's Jaffa Cakes, prompting the catchprase "There's Orangey!" He hosted Victor's Party for Granada. More recently he voiced arch villain Texas Pete in the popular S4C animated TV series SuperTed and has narrated several Fireman Sam audiobooks. Spinetti also starred in Boobs in the Wood' with Jim Davidson, filmed for DVD in 1999.

Spinetti's poetry, notably Watchers Along the Mall (1963), and prose, have appeared in various publications. His memoir, Victor Spinetti Up Front...: His Strictly Confidential Autobiography, published in September 2006, is filled with anecdotes. In conversation with BBC Radio 2's Michael Ball, on his show broadcast on 7 September 2008, Spinetti revealed that Princess Margaret had been instrumental in securing the necessary censor permission for the first run of Oh! What A Lovely War.