Dancing Ledge

Joan Baez & Richard Thompson rehearsal in New York 2016. Photo: Simon Miles

Several of these reviews you will have seen before. A number can be found on this site. This is just a small selection of some of the many shows I have been to over the past 16 years and a digest of the reviews that were published. They are listed here in no particular order. They include both of the exceptional talents pictured above and many many more. Just for info the above photograph is not from the shows i reviewed. It was was taken by my lighting designer brother, Simon.in January 2016 during rehearsals for Joan Baez’s 75th birthday concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York City.

Joan Baez: Fare Thee Well Tour – Brighton Dome

Despite battling a chest infection Joan Baez strode onto the stage of the Brighton Dome on the opening UK night of her extended farewell tour and delivered a performance that was masterful, moving and mesmerising.

The 78-year-old singer was determined that her concert was not going to be diminished by anything as mundane as a pesky illness. True to form she sang beautifully, just occasionally, and I mean occasionally, struggling for a note.

After 60 years on the road, Baez knows how to optimise almost any concert situation. So it was that alongside a wonderful catalogue of songs, starting with her alone on stage singing Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright – the first of five perfectly pitched Bob Dylan covers – we also heard her singing the praises of Britain’s National Health Service.

She had arrived in Brighton via a visit to A&E: “Hey the doctors all looked about 15 years old but they clearly knew what they were doing,” she told us, revealing that blood tests had been made and antibiotics prescribed and all for free. “We don’t get that where I come from,” she sighed.

The medics had done well and more than 20 songs and nearly two hours later Joan Baez finally left the stage to a standing ovation after a series of  encores that had included sure-fire crowd pleasers like Forever Young and a singalong to John Lennon’s Imagine.

For most of the concert Baez had been joined on stage by her son the percussionist Gabe Harris and multi-instrumentalist Dirk Powell. There was also some impressive input from singer Grace Stumberg. Age may have taken the top register from Baez’s soaring soprano but she knows exactly how to use her mature voice to maximum effect. Stumberg meanwhile is on hand to add vocal depth and harmonies to songs like Diamond’s and Rust, Donovan’s Catch the Wind and some belting country blues on Kris Kristofferson’s Me and Bobby McGee.

It was a superbly constructed set featuring songs from throughout the long and illustrious Baez career. Early favourites included Phil Och’s There But for Fortune, Dylan’s Farewell Angelina, Woody Guthrie’s Deportee and the traditional Darling Corey.

 It was an evening full of memories and markers of special times. When she sang Joe Hill many members of the audience will have recalled her performance of the same song at the Woodstock Festival 50 years ago this summer. She was six months pregnant at the time. A glance at percussionist Gabe brought recognition that he had been there too. Yup Woodstock in the womb. How cool is that!

But anyone who thinks this tour is purely about nostalgia is sorely mistaken. There is also a good showing of high-quality material from her latest album Whistle Down the Wind with some beautifully reflective writing from people like Tom Waits and Antony and the Johnsons.

Like the every song in the set these are the kind of numbers that in the capable hands of Joan Baez can live and breath forever! Judging by the length of this extended farewell tour, there’s a good chance that she can too – Jeremy Miles

 ***

John Mayall: Bournemouth Pavilion (Saturday, 25th November, 2017)

The first time I saw John Mayall was nearly 50 years ago and he was old then. Perhaps I should clarify. He was in his mid thirties and I was only 17, so he seemed old to me.

Yet on Saturday night, four days ahead of his 84th birthday, he played the Bournemouth Pavilion and not only was he looking fit and sounding great but he played a brilliant set. What’s more there’s a new album – Talk About That – and, inevitably, yet another line-up of amazing musicians.

That’s the thing you see. Back in 1968 John Mayall was THE man, a musician whose ever-changing band, The Bluesbreakers, had become a sort of finishing school for some of the finest musicians of the era.

By the time I caught up with Mayall, who was known as the Godfather of British Blues, many of his discoveries had already flown the nest.  Eric Clapton had formed Cream and Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie had evolved into the nucleus of the original Fleetwood Mac. He did still have a young Mick Taylor in tow but within the year he would be off to join The Rolling Stones. The Mayall line-ups were phenomenal.

So it’s wonderful to see him keeping on, keeping on and with such energy and focus. Playing keyboards, harmonica and guitars, Mayall has settled on a stripped-down format for his latest band featuring just himself with Chicago session men Greg Rzab on bass and Jay Davenport on drums.

Both are astonishing talents and Mayall uses them brilliantly delivering numbers that span half a century of his own career. They included numbers like Acting Like A Child and The Bear from the late 60s, tracks from the new album and some superb covers of classics by people like Jimmy Rodgers, JB Lenoir and Sonny Boy Williamson.

Two thirds of the way through their 90 minutes set the band was joined on stage by blues guitar virtuoso Buddy Whittington. A one-time Bluesbreaker himself and leader of the trio who had been the opening act, Whittington turned what had been merely excellent into phenomenal. Now a four piece, the band stretched out into sublime versions of Nature’s Disappearing, a song about looming  environmental disaster that Mayall penned decades before green issues made the headlines and California.An absolutely brilliant show –Jeremy Miles

****

Georgie Fame and Family : Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne

What a great evening of music delivered by one the best Hammond organ players in the business. Georgie Fame enjoyed big chart hits in the sixties with hits like Yeh Yeh, Getaway and The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde and decades of life as a touring musician with people like Van Morrison and Bill Wyman.

Now, in his 70s, he’s enjoying a different sort of touring, as family man with a musical legacy to share. And sure eniough, with two sons, Tristan and James, on guitar and drums and his granddaughters, Fallon and Merle (I think), as support act. “Grandpa Georgie”, as he was introduced, focused on the story of his musical life.

He played music from his almost 60 year career, including of course all the aforementioned hits, and offered genial and illuminating anecdotes between numbers. There were great songs by influential performers and writers like Booker T Jones, Ray Charles, Mose Allison, Hoagy Carmichael, Floyd Dixon and Peggy Lee and even a spot of country (Jim Reeves and Willie Nelson) as re-imagined by Ry Cooder and Joe Hinton.

There were memories of the legendary all-nighters at Soho’s Flamingo Club and there were wondrous tales of his early years in rock ’n’ roll, of touring with Eddie Cochrane and Billy Fury, why bhe withdrew from a talent contest at a Welsh holiday camp with a pre Beatles Ringo Starr and much much more. An eye-witness to some serious landmark mioments in rok history, Fame even watched as his tearful drummer Mitch Mitchell, distraught at being sacked from the Blue Flames, was snapped up by new boy on the block Jimi Hendrix.

It was illuminating to hear just how much of Fame’s astonishing career has been down to pure chance. Meeting the right people, being close to the right telephones. It was astonishingly effective. One minute he was a junior worker in a cotton mill in Leigh in Lancashire and the next he was being signed by the great pop impresario Larry Parnes to play piano with his stable of hit-makers. 

This involved, at Parnes’ insistence,  changing his name from plain old Clive Powell to Georgie Fame but it also landed him a gig in Billy Fury’s backing band The Blue Flames. Unfortunately management decided that the Blue Flames were a tad to jazzy for their main man and the entire group were given their marching orders. For Georgie it was too late to change his name back to Clive Powell but not too late to  take over as lead vocalist.

The residency as house band at the Flamingo followed and  then a favorite song, Yeh Yeh, gave them a significant hit and briefly turned Fame and his band into pop stars. They toured relentlessly but before long the music industry sharks were circling. It was Fame who was singing the hits and playing the signature Hammond organ. They could make a whole load more money if they axed the band. The rest as they say is history. Georgie Fame was forced to leave his friends and he learned some uncomfortable lessons about the ruthlessness of the music world but he was also suddenly free to enjoy a career that found him able to indulge his love of jazz, blues and R&B. Ironic really that a boy from the Lancashire cotton mills ended up playing music by people who actually picked the damn stuff in the fields of the Mississippi Delta. 

The Tivoli show featured wonderful stories and some marvellous musical finesse. The Hammond organ is an extraordinarily expressive instrument and Fame knows exactly how to handle it. Though he did switch briefly to piano to pay tribute to the great Fats Domino, one of his original heroes, whose death at the age of 89 had been announced only hours earlier. He chose Good Lawdy Miss Clawdy which was  recorded by Lloyd Price in 1952 featuring a classic Fats performance on piano.

It was a lovely evening with the granddaughters returning to the stage and joining grandpa, dad and uncle for a final number. Reflective and poignant, it was simply called Was –Jeremy Miles

***

Richard Thompson: Lighthouse, Poole

Fifty long years after he made his first appearances as a shy but talented teenage guitarist with Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson is rightly regarded as a one of our greatest singer-songwriters and a brilliant and innovative musician.

This tour offers a fascinating stripped-down perspective on a career that spans half-a-century and has produced some peerless material that actually changed the course of folk music history.

Armed only with an acoustic guitar, an extraordinary talent and the kind of songs that it’s hard to believe haven’t existed forever, Thompson played a two hour set that covered all bases.

There were reworkings of wonderful solo recordings like Gethsemane, and 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. There was a nod too to Fairport with a tender version of Who Knows Where the Time Goes and several classics from the Richard and Linda years with I Want to See the Bright Lights tonight, Wall of Death and a singalong version of Down Where the Drunkards Roll.

Performing at the top of his game, 68-year-old Thompson resplendent in cut-off denim jacket and trademark beret was in fine voice. It’s hard to believe that back in the early years of his career he had little confidence that he possessed much talent as a singer. Somewhere along the line he quite literally found his voice and it’s been getting better ever since.

Perhaps even more impressive is his beautifully dextrous guitar work. Whether playing brilliantly evocative songs like the emotive They Tore The Hippodrome Down or thrashing his way through Push and Shove, his largely forgotten and previously unrecorded tip of the beret to The Who, Richard Thompson is the consummate guitarists” guitarist.

This tour largely supports his recently released Acoustic Classics and Acoustic rarities albums and offers a chance to wonder at the depth and breadth of his repertoire and his abilities as both an artist and an entertainer.

Perhaps the two sides of that coin was captured to perfection in the final encores with Waltzing’s for Dreamers and Don’t Sit On My Jimmy Shands.

Support act was singer Josienne Clark and guitarist Ben Walker who also paid tribute to Thompson’s late lamented one-time Fairport Convention bandmate Sandy Denny with an impressive version of Fotheringay –Jeremy Miles

Bob Dylan: Bournemouth International Centre

The lights go down. There’s a sense of anticipation that almost crackles in the air. Which Bob Dylan are we going to get tonight?

Will it be good Dylan or bad Dylan? Brilliant Dylan or atrocious Dylan? Over the past four decades I’ve seen them all. I’ve been listening to his music even longer.

The answer comes as the man himself appears in the spotlight and opens the show, as he has every night on this latest leg of his famed Never Ending Tour, with Things Have Changed, his Oscar winner number from the turn of the millennium. Things certainly have changed as we will discover in an evening that mixes Dylan classics with his American songbook covers.

 His voice is stronger than it has been in years, his five piece band is superb and Bob himself seems almost chirpy. I say ‘almost’. He’s as idiosyncratic as ever, performing either from the piano which he plays rather badly or striking attitudes with the microphone stand from the back of the stage. He does an almost imperceptible jig here, a shuffle there and an occasional self-conscious hand on hip pose. He looks like a rather camp gunslinger but the music is amazing and his vocals are masterful.

The growl and yelp of yesteryear seem seriously under control. Songs from across the decades somehow gel in a manner that they have no right to. Duquesne Whistle, Stormy Weather and Tangled up in Blue sit happily side  by side. Highway 61 Revisited and Melancholy Mood do not seem strange partners at all. 

As for his recent elevation to Nobel Laureate for Literature? Four songs in and he’s already referenced everyone from Ovid and Percy Bysshe Shelley to Duane Eddy and God. He’s very well read, it’s well known.

Intriguingly Dylan’s 2012 album Tempest supplies no fewer than five songs. Great material but there is of course even greater material missing. It’s an argument that could go on for ever. You’ll never please everyone. 

For me the most telling moment came during the encores when before closing with a wonderfully faithful to the original Ballad of a Thin Man, Dylan performed a pleasing sounding but ultimately perplexing version of Blowin’ in the Wind which he delivered as a jaunty croon-along ditty.

Was he being ironic? Or is it just that things really have changed since he first wrote that song as a 21-year-old making an anguished plea to the world to stop killing and wars? 

I suspect that 75-year-old Bob Dylan now knows that his words may have earned him millions but they’ve sadly done little to bring peace to our increasingly unstable world. Blowin’ in the Wind is, at the end of the day just another song –Jeremy Miles

 ****

Ralph McTell: Lighthouse, Poole.Tuesday 1st November 2016

Celebrating 50 years on the road, acoustic folk giant Ralph McTell was in understandably nostalgic mood for this wonderful concert. For a start he was returning to Poole where he spent the freezing winter of 1962-63 living in a beatnik crash pad in a fish-crate store over a bookies shop in the High Street. There have been a few changes since then. “There’s so much more traffic,” he murmured in wonderment. “We’ve got colour television… we’ve been to the moon!” 

McTell has written a few songs too. Not least his greatest hit Streets of London which he slipped in as the penultimate number, with the audience singing along, in a set that had taken us on a remarkable journey through his life and career. With an inimitable deep velvety voice and a guitar style that is without equal, McTell delivers songs that are often deeply autobiographical. He’s a profoundly skilled songwriter and compelling storyteller. His opening numbers Walk Into The Morning and Nanna’s Song evoked memories of life as a young busker in Paris while Barges recalled days of innocent wonder and childhood games.

But there were observational songs too like Pepper and Tomatoes which he penned in response to the appalling ethnic cleansing that occurred as neighbour turned against neighbour in the former Yugoslavia.  There was Reverend Thunder which told the story of blues legend the Rev Gary Davis who, even though he was blind, carried a gun to deter thieves. Other prime influences on McTell included Woody Guthrie, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and of course Bob Dylan. We were treated to the result of their distant tutelage and a few spin-offs too. Here was a one-time simple South London folk singer who opened his ears to some wondrous sounds and soaked up everything that was going.  It was all there at the Poole concert – a  little bluesy ragtime here, the earnest words of a New York cowboy there and the occasional blast of a soul-warming Dylanesque harmonica. It was a joy. McTell says that as a songwriter and musician, he’s still learning. At 71 he sounds at the top of his game, though one or two of the high notes he would have routinely included a few years back are now a challenge to his vocal abilities. It’s not a problem. His mastery of stagecraft and songmanship is a more than  adequate compensatory factor.

He encored with West 4th and Jones, a song inspired by the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, an album he recalled first seeing (and hearing)  when he was living in Poole, penniless but full of optimism for the future. He’s right of course. There really have been a lot of changes in the ensuing decades. Who’da thought back then that radical vagabond folkie Dylan would become a Nobel Laureate? Now that we all know how well deserved that award is, it seems an obvious choice but back then it would  have been unthinkable. Ralph Mctell made a point of publicly adding his congratulations from the Lighthouse stage and it underlined the fact that then times really are a changin’.

Sadly one thing that has not changed in the past half century is the lack of empathy shown to the homeless, the poor and the mentally ill.  The pen-portraits that Ralph McTell used to describe the desperate, lonely and vulnerable in Streets of London are as pertinent now as they were on the day that he wrote the song – Jeremy Miles

***

Al Stewart: Bournemouth Pavilion

This concert was something of a homecoming for singer-songwriter Al Stewart. As a local teenage beat musician Al used to play a regular Tuesday night residency at the Pavilion, playing lead guitar for The Sabres whose singer Tony Blackburn (yup THAT Tony Blackburn) used to rip off his gold lame jacket and writhe on the stage.

Al was 17 back then. He’s 71 now and, despite that rather cheesy start, has enjoyed a stellar international career.  

He’s out on the road with his Back to the Bedsit tour playing stripped back acoustic versions of songs from the past 50 years.

The title references the fact that Al launched his recording career with the album Bedsitter Images, the title song of which was his opener last night. Astonishingly this was his first Pavilion show since 1962. Appropriately it was a Tuesday. 

With guitar accompaniment from long-time collaborator Dave Nachmanoff and one-time Sutherland Brothers and Quiver guitarist Tim Renwick, Al plundered his own back catalogue with joyous abandon.

The subtlety and dexterity of the acoustic backing, enhanced by percussion, flute and sax from guest Marc Macisso, helped emphasise the strength of Stewart’s lyrics.

Songs like On the Border, Night Train to Munich and Old Admirals displayed the intelligence and sense of place and history at the core of his work.

He may be a singer-songwriter, most famous of course for his 1976 hit The Year of the Cat, but essentially he’s a writer. If he wasn’t writing songs I am certain that he’d be writing poems, plays or history books – Jeremy Miles

 ***

Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, Lighthouse, Poole

The first time Bill Wyman played Poole he was less than impressed with the reception he received. 

It was 1963 and his band, a virtually unknown bunch of scruffs called The Rolling Stones, had been booked to play a dance. “It was full of hooligans with beer bottles. It wasn’t a pleasant evening.” recalled the bassman.

 He admits he hasn’t a clue where it was. “Probably pulled down long ago.” 

But an uneasy memory clearly  persists and, on Friday, as he stepped onto a Poole stage for only the second time in his life, Wyman surveyed the rather sedate Lighthouse audience and joked:  “I hope this evening is going to be a bit better.” 

He needn’t have worried. The only things that got thrown at the stage were compliments as his excellent touring band The Rhythm Kings leapt into action with a set that paid loving tribute to a rich vein of music that covered everything from the blues of the Mississippi delta and the streets of Chicago to the rock ‘n’ roll of Chuck Berry and Gene Vincent. 

Somewhere in between they visited jazz, boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues  and a whole lot of soul. But as former Supremes vocalist Mary Wilson was their special guest this was perhaps hardly surprising. 

Wyman’s band features an astonishing collection of talents. There’s Georgie Fame on organ, Geraint Watkins on piano, Graham Broad on drums, Terry Taylor and Albert Lee on guitars, Frank Mead and Nick Payn on horns, the wonderful Beverley Skeete on vocals and Wyman himself on bass.

It’s a rare line-up that can blaze through a Supremes song like Stop In The Name of Love, chill out with a Mose Allison number or get the house up and grooving to the Stones’ Honky Tonk Woman.

Marred only by a slightly soupy sound, this was a night for having fun.

There were anecdotes galore. Chuck Berry may be an iconic rock ’n’ roller but in Wyman’s book he’s “a nasty piece of work”. We heard how Gene Vincent had taught a 16-year-old Clive Powell, aka Georgie Fame, how to do an autograph and learnt first-hand how The Everley Brothers left an indelible mark on their longtime sideman Albert Lee.  

The magic of Don and Phil was revisited with spine-tingling results in what for me was actually the best performance of the evening, a beautifully stripped down version of So Sad which found Lee playing piano while duetting with Beverley Skeete accompanied only by Terry Taylor on guitar. 

The show ended with Wilson leading the band (and audience) in a rousing encore – the Motown anthem Dancing in the Streets. Ten minutes later some happy audience members were doing just that – Jeremy Miles

 ***

Mary Wilson, Bournemouth Pavilion

There was perhaps an understandable note of triumph as Mary Wilson recalled her rocky road to fame.

 “Yeah, I was just one of the girls singing the oohs and ahs behind Diana, but don’t think I didn’t have fun.” She fixed the Pavilion audience with a knowing stare. “I was laughing all the way to the bank for 45 years”

Being a Supreme was obviously a pretty tough gig. Three girls from the wrong side of the tracks in Detroit pulled off the streets and schooled for stardom by Tamla Motown Svengali Berry Gordy. A masterful manipulator of talent, he had them drilled in everything from dress to deportment before letting them out on the road with a collection of dream songs and routines custom-designed for the job.

 As the hits poured in another element was added to sound of the famed Motown rhythm section – the vague resonance of clashing egos. Diana Ross got the big bucks (and quite a few bad headlines). Poor Florence Ballard couldn’t hack it at all. She left the band, went into a downward spiral and died aged just 32.

But Mary Wilson just kept on keeping on.  The result is plain for everyone to see. She certainly isn’t anyone’s backing vocalist on this tour. She’s a big name fronting a seriously slick soul band and steaming through all the big hits – Stop In the Name of Love, You Keep Me Hanging On, River Deep Mountain High, Baby Love… they were all there.

Just days before her 67th birthday this extraordinary grandmother of eight was looking good and sounding phenomenal.  At one point she invited a dozen members of the audience up on stage to sing along. It could have been a disaster but it worked a treat.

Support act were 70s smooch-merchants The Chi-Lites bringing with them some super-smooth tunes and a few memories that had just a whiff of Old Spice and Blue Nun about them –Jeremy Miles

 ***

Ringo Starr’s All Star Band, Bournemouth International Centre

Several light years ago I witnessed the second incarnation of Ringo Starr’s All Star Band in action in a Los Angeles TV studio. 

It boasted an astonishing line-up of guitarists – Joe Walsh, Nils Lofgren,  Todd Rundgren and Dave Edmunds. What did they do? They plonked their way perfunctorily through Yellow Submarine.. It was heartbreaking.

In other words I knew what to expect when Ringo, now on version eleven of his All Star band, pitched up at the BIC. The latest outfit includes such luminaries as Rick Derringer and Edgar Winter. There’s Wally Palmar from The Romantics, Gary “`Dreamweaver” Wright, bassman Richard Page from Mr Mister and drummer-of-choice to the A-list Gregg Bissonette. Between them they have several hundred years of experience. More to the point they’re fine musicians and with the clown prince of The Beatles as their paymaster, they can command a £65 ticket price without too much embarrassment.

Yet once again it was thump along with Ringo time. The (old) boys in the band chucked a few of their own hits into  the stew – Hang On Sloopy, Talking in Your Sleep, Frankenstein etc. But the highlights were still Ringo being er well Ringo and singing, badly but inimitably, numbers like Honey Don’t,  I Wanna Be Your Man, Boys, Act Naturally  and of course With A Little help From My Friends and the aforementioned Yellow Submarine. Quite a nifty singalong version this time as it happens. 

 There was much flashing of peace signs and Ringo looked great, nothing like his 70 years.  Though the audience response was lukewarm, towards the end of the show some bloke in the terrace yelled “I love you Ringo”.  

The former Beatle didn’t miss a beat. He beamed delightedly and pointed towards the voice.  “And I love you too,” he announced. As the inevitable laughter died away, he added: “I’d rather it had been a high girlie voice. But you’ll do.”

The fact is of course that we all love Ringo, and he knows it. It’s why he gets away with these awful concerts – Jeremy Miles

*****

Slim Chance – Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne

Pioneered by original members Charlie Hart and Steve Simpson the rebirth of Slim Chance has been a long time coming.

The band was originally formed by Small Faces and Faces bassman Ronnie Lane back in the seventies as an antidote to the endless frustrations of the music business.

Slim Chance – a low-key collection of big talents – offered freedom and fun. The chance to hit the road and play a stirring and instantly recognisable mix of country, folk and rock in village halls, tents, clubs and small theatres. They even took a Big Top on tour, creating the legendary Passing Show. There were dancing girls, fire-eaters, jugglers and many hangovers.

Sadly the irrepressible Ronnie was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and as his health gradually declined he was forced to give up performing. He died in 1997 but left a considerable musical legacy.  

This reincarnation of Slim Chance finds guitarist Simpson and fiddle and accordion player Hart teaming up with other original members like bass player Steve Bingham, guitarist Alun Davies and drummer Colin Davey. Together with the great Geraint Watkins on keyboards they make a formidable team.  The Wimborne show, perhaps just a little under-rehearsed, revisited Slim Chance classics like How Come, The Poacher, Ooh La La, Debris and many more.

The result was a  delightfully raggedy but nonetheless superb performance from class musicians intent on keeping the faith. They achieve it by delivering the passion without the polish. And in some ways that’s just the way it should be. Slim Chance was always a relatively ‘loose’ band. But judging from their Tivoli performance with its occasional flashes of utter briliance, if they just tightened things up a notch or two, they’d be sublime. And with players like these that level of performance is probably only a gig or two away – Jeremy Miles

***

Paul Simon, Bournemouth International Centre

WHEN he first played the folk clubs around Bournemouth and Poole more than 40 years ago, Paul Simon could never have imagined the career that lay ahead.

He recalled those days from the stage of the BIC on Monday as he returned to the town, a fully-fledged superstar.

“I played in Bournemouth when I was a kid,” he told the delighted audience.

The diminutive New Yorker had strolled on stage dressed like the coach of a passing baseball team.

Armed with an astonishing back catalogue of songs and an impossibly talented band, he proceeded to deliver one of the best concerts the BIC has ever seen.

Drawing on material produced over four decades he gave a performance that showed him not only to be a brilliant singer-songwriter but also a versatile musician and (more surprisingly perhaps) a compelling bandleader.

Simon may have a reputation for being reclusive, grumpy and difficult to work with but last night he was all smiles, romping through a set that included some wonderful new arrangements of instantly familiar songs – Mrs Robinson, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Slip Sliding Away, Graceland… the list seemed endless.

There was new stuff too. The beautiful Father and Daughter, the pointed How Can You live in the North East? It was a show that harnessed influences ranging from folk and rock to Township jive and accordion-driven Zydeco.

The result, as played by Simon and his seven-piece band, was hugely inventive but also highly accessible, never compromising the quality of the original songs – Jeremy Miles

*****

Neil Sedaka Bournemouth International Centre 20th October, 2012

It’s nearly 55 years since Neil Sedaka arrived on the scene with the first of a series of hits that would make him one of the most influential singer-songwriters in the history of popular music.

With numbers like Oh Carol, Calendar Girl, Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen and Breaking Up Is Hard To Do it took the young New Yorker just four years – from 1958 to 1963 – to sell an astounding 40 million records.

That certainly wasn’t the end of it – there have been many more brilliant recordings – and on Saturday night a now 73-year-old Sedaka arrived in Bournemouth armed only with a grand piano, his inimitable voice and a formidable catalogue of instantly recognisable songs.

 The ensuing concert was a masterclass in how to write and perform numbers so catchy that they still have people singing along, word-perfect a half a century after they were first released.

A superb pianist – trained at Manhattan’s famed Julliard School – Sedaka also possesses a genius for composition, a matinee idol tenor that can convey drama, heartbreak and joy with deceptive ease and a sizable dash of rock ‘n’ roll showmanship. It’s a compelling combination.

He’s written more than  500 songs – literally the soundtrack to an era. Impossibly catchy pop masterpieces and tear-jerking ballads that have been covered by everyone from Elvis to Elton, The Simpsons to Sinatra. But it’s Sedaka himself who has given them their trademark sound.

The BIC concert delivered hit after hit. Many from his pop idol era but several more dramatic, and more recent, numbers. There was the almost Bernsteinesque Cardboard California from the 1970s and the heartbreaking Mi Amour from his new album The Real Neil. There were anecdotes too and a handy screen – mainly showing close-ups of his hands – but also delivering an hilarious video that Sedaka made to promote Calendar Girl way back in 1961.

After observing his lithe, youthful self surrounded by scantly clad lovelies the singer told the audience that he’d actually met Miss January in an Los Angeles restaurant a few weeks back. “She was a very, very old woman,” he revealed gravely, before adding with a smug gesture to the screen, “Of course I’m just the same.” A great evening of fun and superb music.

Jeremy Miles

****

PJ Proby, Regent Centre, Christchurch.

Larger than life American singer PJ Proby sealed his reputation as a star way back in the sixties when he split his trousers on stage half way through a UK tour.

Moral campaigners tried to have him deported. The ensuing publicity hiked his profile to dizzying heights.

Sadly at the Regent Centre on Sunday it appeared that more than 40 years on his entire career is coming apart at the seams.  

Now 70-years-old and – after 17 sober years – still recovering from the decades of alcoholism that nearly killed him, Proby puffed and panted his way around the stage. 

Overweight and sweating profusely, he struggled through his big hits as he desperately tried to recapture the once glorious vocal prowess that sent songs like Maria and Somewhere soaring up the charts. 

As he delivered his trademark mix of big ballads and pop-screamers like Hold Me there was an occasional glimpse of what used to be, but most of the time he was all over the place. Not that the devoted seemed deterred. As Proby gurned, hollered and harumphed his way through little more than 30 minutes of songs, ladies of a certain age crowded the front of the stage desperate to touch his hand.

The backing band were sixties chart contenders Vanity Fare, best remembered for irritating pop ditties like I Live For the Sun and Hitchin’ A Ride.

It fell to them together with Brian Poole – once front man for The Tremeloes – to provide the rest of this two hour show. Most of the audience seemed to love it. I’m afraid I thought it was rubbish – Jeremy Miles

****

I received a furious email about this saying that I should be ashamed, that this was a personal attack, that  I obviously know nothing about music and showbusiness, that I should join the ranks of “other know nothing brain dead no ones like Mary Whitehouse and her pet dog  Lord Longford who ruined Proby’s reputation in the 60s”. Oh yes, and I would have been better occupied spending my evening at a wrestling match. 

This came from a Brian Dolan in Amsterdam who is clearly passionate about the music of Mr Proby. Good on you for standing up for what you believe in Brian. 

But, just for the record, my review was NOT a personal attack. I think Jim, as PJ is known to his friends, is a great character. I’ve interviewed him at length in the past  and he’s a class raconteur. His music has never been particularly to my taste but he used to be a truly dynamic performer. I expected (indeed hoped for) a compelling stage show at Christchurch. I didn’t get it. It was a terrible show. 

Quite why expressing this opinion puts me in the same category as that small-minded, prudish bigot and control freak Mary Whitehouse and the well-meaning but utterly deluded Frank Longford I cannot imagine. After all I’m not asking anyone to agree with me. 

As for knowing nothing about music and showbusiness? Take a look around this site and, if you’re still upset, just remember my review will be forgotten in a few days – Jeremy Miles 

***

Roger  McGuinn, Lighthouse, Poole

We heard him before we saw him.  His inimitable 12 string Rickenbacker ringing out the intro to Dylan’s My Back Pages from the wings of the stage.

Then Roger McGuinn, founder of the legendary Byrds and architect of the band’s signature sound, strolled on all in black: leather waistcoat, cowboy-boots, hat tipped over one eye and playing that jingle-jangle sound that changed the course of the history of popular music.

Alone on stage with just the famous Rickenbacker and a custom-made seven string acoustic Martin, the genial 69-year-old McGuinn took us through a back catalogue of songs that seemingly connect everything with everything. From The Beatles to Bach to The Byrds. From folk-rock to country to shimmering acid-drenched psychedelia.  

His instantly recognisable clear bright tenor vocals, his dextrous guitar work, a multi-layered shower of harmonic joy. This was the story of a man with a rare ear for a tune, an eye for an opportunity and a love of a good story. 

There was inevitably a lot of Dylan. The classic chart hits which reinvented Mr Tambourine Man and All I Really Want To Do and the less commercial but perhaps more riveting numbers like The Chimes of Freedom and You Ain’t Going Nowhere,

 A truly gifted musician, he cited influenced from Ravi Shankar to John Coltrane to Andres Segovia. There were covers of songs by Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly and even a sea-shanty or two. 

Self-penned or co-written masterpieces included  5D, Mr Spaceman, He Was A Friend of Mine, The Ballad of Easy Rider, the stunning Chestnut Mare and the beautiful closing number May The Road Rise To Meet You.

 There were anecdotes galore too. How the band’s name was inspired by a Thanksgiving table groaning under the weight of a celebratory turkey. How a cocktail napkin with a few scrawled lyrics travelled coast to coast to become The Ballad of Easy Rider. How he came to write a pirate song while swashbuckling his way across the eastern seaboard with the Rolling Thunder Review and why, without a nod from jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, The Byrds might never have got a record deal. 

All in all this was one  jingle-jangle evening extremely well spent. 

*****

 Albert Lee and Hogan’s Heroes, Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne

What a band! Albert Lee – guitarist’s guitarist supreme – may play fast and furious country-rock, picking like a man possessed, but he does it with unbelievable finesse.

Which is why, over the years, he has worked with everyone from The Everlys to Emmylou and Joe Cocker to Eric Clapton.

Celebrating 50-years in the business this December, he is currently out on the road with Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, except of course when he’s touring with his own little supergroup, Hogan’s Heroes. The band comprising some of the world’s finest session musicians, each boasting a cv that is almost as good as that possessed by Albert’s himself, offers a powerful on-stage mix.

It features Gerry Hogan on lap steel, Elio Pace on keyboards, Brian Hodgeson on bass and Peter Baron on drums. With irrepressible silver-haired Albert as frontman, it’s a formidable outfit. 

On Friday, a packed Tivoli enjoyed a sublime evening that showed just how good this band is. The music covered everything from country rock to tear-jerking ballads and vintage rock ‘n’ roll. There was even a Beatles cover – Abbey Road’s Oh Darling. But whatever they played, the musicianship was exemplary, the sound superb and the interplay between band members positively mesmerising A special night!

Excellent, if all too brief, support came from local singer-songwriter Lou Brown, a bedsit troubadour who’s going places. Brown has just given up her day job as a social worker to become a full-time musicians. She’s already been spotted by the likes of Johnnie Walker and is currently working on a new album with the with former Christine Collister collaborator/producer Clive Gregson. No wonder. Brown has a rare talent for the content and structure of a song, a voice to die for and a delivery that plays magical tricks with meter and time signature. 

Footnote: For some however Lee and his cohorts are clearly just too polished. I overheard a young woman outside the theatre being  asked by a friend what the gig had been like. She shrugged, thought for a moment and replied: “It was er very accomplished.” Talk about being damned with faint praise. I do understand though. 

At one point during the gig, Lee himself commented on stage “This is a job for a younger man.”  The raw energy of youth, the ragged brilliance of a jam that just falls gloriously together is something else, this music is honed to perfection and that is what the show is about. I reckon we’d all rather see the former but that only happens once in a blue moon. Lee and the boys probably achieve 98 per cent hit rate. You pays your money – Jeremy Miles

****

Barbe Jungre, Shelley Theatre, Bournemouth?

Barb Jungr is a performer of rare quality. A cabaret singer with an ear for exceptional lyrical artistry and the voice and intelligence to hone in on the absolute essence of a song.

Accompanied by her regular pianist/collaborator Simon Wallace, her latest show highlights the works of the men that she has loved as songwriters.

Mainly Americans, though there was one Canadian (Leonard Cohen) and a Scotsman (Mike Scott), these are writers whose works have become part of the very foundations  of popular music.

Using simple arrangements and an unerring emotional understanding of the songs in her set, Jungr set about laying bare the beauty and pain of some absolutely exceptional  writing.

Dylan’sYou Aint Going Nowhere reworked in all its flippant lyrical genius, Diamond’s I’m A Believer delivered as a poignant slow-burning ballad, Springsteen’s The River fully exposed as an agonising tale of lost dreams, misery and death in blue collar America.

It was a wondrous performance that examined hopes, failure and redemption through songs whose true power is all too often lost amidst over-ambitious production values.

Paul Simon’s My Little Town and Cohen’s The Night Comes On were among those that brought tears of recognition to the eye – Jeremy Miles

***

Julie Felix, Lighthouse, Poole

The money men from the three main political parties may have been slugging it out on TV but who needs “bread-heads” when you’ve got a real live counter-culture heroine singing songs of passion, pain and protest?

Watching sixties survivor Julie Felix slashing at her guitar and railing against war, greed, and those that oppress and manipulate was a bit like travelling back 40 years to the days when she sang alongside Dylan, Cohen and Paxton.

Monday’s Lighthouse show may have been a little ragged around the edges and there were sound problems that, after a false start, delayed proceedings for half and hour, but Felix is a free-spirit and joyous performer.

The girl who hitch-hiked across Europe and found herself with a serious TV career after a chance meeting with David Frost in a lift, is in her early 70s now. She doesn’t look it. In fact she’s like a child forgotten by time, keeping the faith and spirit of the sixties alive. 

The songs ranged from Dylan protest classics like Masters of War and A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall to Woody Guthrie’s early dustbowl ballads  and a series of singalong favourites. Ever versatile she even gave us a reprise of her drama college role as Second Witch in Macbeth – Jeremy Miles

****

Jackson Browne, Bournemouth International Centre

AFTER a day off in Bournemouth, midway through his lengthy world tour, Jackson Browne was in decidedly chirpy mood. 

Full of praise for the town, he chattered from the stage about Indian restaurants, how much he loves the sea and the fact that he’d popped into The Odeon to see The Good Thief. 

The American singer-songwriter even gave us his finest Nick Nolte impression. It was one of those nights!

Browne, on top form, stormed through the highlights of his 30 year career and gave us a big slice of excellent new material from his latest album The Naked Ride Home too.

By the time he finally brought proceeding to a close with a triumphant double encore – first the gloriously anthemic segue of Load Out/Stay from 1977’s Running On Empty album and then going even further into his back catalogue for  a blistering version of Doctor My Eyes – three hours had passed. 

Audience and artist were blissfully happy. Along the way Browne and his superbly tight six piece band had visited many of the milestones of his long and prolific recording career.

High points included Bright Baby Blues, Sky Blue and Black, The Pretender and Lives In The Balance, a song given a whole new  poignancy and tension by the threat of impending war.

But while it always feels good to wallow in a little nostalgia what was really heartening was to hear the power and freshness of the new – Jeremy Miles

••••

An Audience with Steven Berkoff at Avonbourne Girls School in Bournemouth

Controversial actor, writer and director Steven Berkoff let loose in a school full of sensitive young girls. Is that wise? I’m joking of course. Berkoff’s reputation precedes him. Tough-talking, uncompromising, occasionally terrifying – he once issued a death threat to a critic who gave him a less than favourable review – he’s a presence to be reckoned with.

Scowling backstage before his appearance in An Audience with Steven Berkoff at Avonbourne Girls School in Bournemouth he did nothing to dispel the hard-man image. He had a cold, there was no one to interview him on stage. No one had told him what he was expected to do. He was not happy!

With an eye on his film career a reporter from the local newspaper had asked him who he had liked working with.

Berkoff scoffed at the idea. “I don’t really like working with anyone,” he snarled. “They like working with me.”

He stomped off to his dressing room. “I’m afraid he’s in a bit of bad mood,” whispered the  drama teacher whose idea it had been to get Berkoff to talk to the pupils. It had seemed such a good idea at the time. He didn’t look too sure now.

He needn’t have worried. Showtime arrived and so did Dr Theatre. Berkoff became a great big genial pussycat holding the 150 strong audience spellbound as he regaled them with tales from his long career in theatre and film.

Berkoff is best known to many as the bad guy in movies like Octopussy and Beverly Hills Cop and can currently be seen on the big screen in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

He made his name however in the 1960s and 70s as the bad boy of British Theatre. Outspoken and determined he riled the critics but the brilliance of his performances and the radical power of his productions eventually earned him the respect of the theatrical establishment.

In this  special An Audience with Steven Berkoff, organised in conjunction with Clive Conway Celebrity Productions, the 74-year-old described how he learned his craft –  at stage school, as a theatrical dogsbody in the West End and during years of summer seasons in repertory companies. 

Performing 15 plays in 15 weeks in rep’ was, he said, like “a recurring nightmare” but extraordinarily useful experience. Finally Berkoff broke free, staging his own productions, studying mime in Paris and working in the avant-garde.  

Today he look can look back on his early years with some pride. He has a somewhat ambivalent attitude to his film work. He described the tedium of shooting endless takes for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo under the direction of David Fincher and how he had eventually turned to co-star Jolie Richardson and asked: “How on earth do you survive this?” 

Live theatre is in Berkoff’s veins. Movies may look glamorous and pay better but, as he told his young audience: “Nothing can ever come near the thrill you feel on stage when the curtain goes up.” 

 The one-time enfant-terrible of the English theatre seems both surprised and delighted to find his work being studied as part of the current  A-level curriculum. “It’s wonderful,” he yelled. “It stands against all the slippery, slimy sods who slammed the door in my face. It vindicates me. I have the young!” – Jeremy Miles

****

Leonard Cohen: Bournemouth International Centre (26th August, 2013)

Singer, songwriter, performer, poet and sometime Buddhist monk, Leonard Cohen defies expectations… even for those who have loved his words and music for decades. The opening night of his UK tour in Bournemouth last night (Monday August 26) was a magical affair that left the capacity audience dizzy with admiration. They’d been expecting an exceptional concert but this was something else.

Cohen, whose career as a poet and performer spans almost 60 years (his first book was published in 1956), led his ten piece band through a sublime three-and-a-half hour set that delivered landmark numbers new and old. From Suzanne and  Bird on the Wire to new songs like Darkness, Amen and Going Home from his latest album Old Ideas. 

Somewhere in between there was material from across the years. Extraordinary lyrics honed to perfection then sharpened still further by amazing arrangements and exemplary musicianship. Stand out tracks came thick and fast: The Future, Everybody Knows, Take This Waltz, I’m Your Man, Hallelujah, Chelsea Hotel #2, So Long Marianne, Famous Blue Raincoat, Closing Time…the list goes on.

The band, with musical director Roscoe Beck on bass, excelled as both virtuoso musicians and fine collaborators. It included Neil Larson on keyboards, Mitch Watkins on guitar, Rafael Gayol on drums, Alexandru Bublitchi on violin and Javier Mas on a variety of Spanish guitars, mandolins and exotic stringed instruments. Between them they delivered music that, with elements of klezmer, jazz, blues and latin, cocooned Cohen’s deep, deep vocals in a sound that could be soothing, melodic and absolutely cutting edge all at the same time. With beautiful vocals from sometime co-writer Sharon Robinson – given her own solo spot on Alexandra Leaving – and the glorious Webb Sisters, Hattie and Charley, the unique Cohen sound was complete.

Booted and suited, Cohen, who celebrates his eightieth birthday next year, jogged onto the stage doffing his trademark fedora. Elegant and gracious in a performance that plumbed searing observations of love, life and human frailties, he moved effortlessly between sombre reverence and joyful celebration, dropping to his knees in supplication, skipping and dancing and offering an eloquently humorous commentary. As a huge round of applause greeted the opening notes of Tower of Song, he paused, fixed the audience with a kindly stare and joked: “I hope this isn’t  compassion for the elderly.” 

This was a performance of the very highest order. Among the best I’ve ever seen. At the very least it confounded the oft-cited gloom-merchant stereotype that has been Cohen’s burden since the 1960s when he was routinely dismissed as the bedsit troubadour of choice for those planning to slash their wrists. How wrong they have were. Cohen’s songs may often contain tales of sadness and regret but the are not depressing. They are observational and reflective and, as demonstrated by the joyous smiles on the faces of the audience at the BIC, uplifting and inspiring too -Jeremy Miles

The Rocky Horror Show: Bournemouth Pavilion (Monday 21st October, 2019)

Round the corner from the theatre I spy a girl in a trashy silver mini-dress, torn fishnets and smudged mascara sparking up a spliff. At the entrance to the car park a stretch limo disgorges a wondrous assortment of cross-dressing party-goers.

Half an hour later I’m whooping it up in the stalls wearing a single surgical glove, waving a blue glow-stick and yelling at Kevin Clifton’s sister that she’s a slut.

For anyone who doesn’t know I should perhaps explain that the props were provided and the insult is all part of the expected, indeed required, audience banter.

But gosh the Rocky Horror Show does things to a normally well-behaved chap and this production is a particularly good version of this marvellously flamboyant rock ’n’ roll musical that is almost guaranteed to strip you of your inhibitions.

Amazingly it is now more than 45 years since Richard O’Brien scribbled the original idea for this show on a cigarette packet providing himself with a gold-plated pension and the rest of us with a show that will as far as I can see keep us all doing the Time Warp forever.

It has everything: geeks, transexuals, aliens and a nifty storyline about naive sweethearts Brad and Janet (Jake Small and Joanne Clifton) who make a big mistake when their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere by knocking on the door of a strange castle inhabited by mad bi-sexual scientist Frank N Furter (Stephen Webb)

They are soon trapped and stripped of their innocence by Frank and his motley crew led by spooky servants Riff-Raff and Magenta (Kristian Lavercombe and Laura Harrison). They soon discover that Frank has created a living being in his lab in the form of the gymnastic and perfectly muscled  Rocky (Callum Evans), What could possibly go wrong?

Narrator Philip Franks trades information and insults with the audience as we find out. With superb performances all round and a sizzling hot live band the show rocks along for two hours of perfect entertainment. It runs at Bournemouth Pavilion until Saturday 26th October – Jeremy Miles

 ***

Nicholas Parsons: Forest Arts Centre, New Milton 18th October, 2019.

 How often do you get to hear a 96-year-old man talking about how good he looks in a basque, fishnet stockings and high heels? Veteran actor, broadcaster and presenter Nicholas Parsons’ wonderfully engaging evening of anecdotes drew on an astonishing 75 years in show business and was full of fascinating facts and unexpected revelations.

The fishnets story was from his time as The Narrator in the Rocky Horror Show in the 1990s. He was genuinely amazed at how good his legs looked in tantalising lingerie. “I had no idea. We men don’t tend to spend a lot of time looking at our legs,” he explained.  

There was much more, with stories of his childhood in the 1920s and 30s, his life as a teenager during wartime and the engineering apprenticeship in Glasgow’s tough Clydeside dockyards that he took to please his parents who were suspicious of his desire to work on the stage. They were convinced that showbusiness was populated by deviants, degenerates and alcoholics.

Once he’d qualified as an engineer, Nicholas – best known these days as the long time presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Just a Minute – decided to go into the theatre anyway.

It’s an astonishing story which finds him, a week after his 96th birthday, still working, despite an accident in the summer that put him in hospital for five weeks.

Looking frail, and performing from a chair, he held the audience in rapt  attention describing in impressive detail his showbiz life. He’s a great storyteller and though his legs are currently a little weak, his voice is strong, his delivery his spot on and there is clearly nothing wrong with his memory. He’s even a dab hand at impressions. 

Nicholas Parsons’ remarkable showbiz life has taken him from weekly rep to pioneering TV comedy with Arthur Haynes and Benny Hill to the long running quiz show Sale of the Century. There have been West End plays, films and musicals along the way and of course the much loved Just a Minute radio show.

Nicholas revealed that he originally thought the panel game which challenges celebrity contestants  to speak on a randomly chosen subject for one minute without hesitation, deviation or repetition was going to be a disaster. What’s more he considered himself totally unsuited to be its chairman. It looks as though he was wrong. He has been doing the job for nearly 53 years now – Jeremy Miles

****

No Man’s Land: Lighthouse, Poole (19th September, 2019).

Ever since Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land was first staged at London’s Old Vic 45 long years ago, critics have been struggling to work out what exactly the playwright was saying and why.

The joy of this play is of course that actually it really doesn’t matter. There can be myriad interpretations and whether it is about coercion, control, manipulation or just losing ones sense of identity, it remains fundamentally a beautiful piece of writing.

London Classic Theatre and director Michael Cabot explore its carefully nuanced complexities in this fine production, 

The story plays out in the opulent Hampstead living room of a wealthy, successful and chronically alcoholic writer called Hirst  – a tour de force performance by Moray Treadwell.  It appears he has invited Spooner, a down-at-heel poet, back from the pub. With Nicholas Gasson as the tweedy, weedy, socks and sandals wearing Spooner very much up for a drink, the booze flows and so does Pinter’s wonderfully poetic and artfully convoluted dialogue.

As Hirst drinks himself into a stupor in the small hours two more figures arrive on the scene – the flamboyantly camp Foster (Joel Macey) and the menacing Briggs (Graham O’Mara).

Who are they? What is the connection between Hirst and Spooner?  There are some surprises in store, plenty of dark humour and an overarching sense that Hirst’s world is tipping into chaos. He is marooned in a no man’s land from which there can be no escape.  All is enhanced by a superbly unsettling set by Bek Palmer – a stunning mix of circles, stuffed animals and a world literally full of alcohol. Wonderful stuff.

No Man’s Land plays Lighthouse in Poole until Saturday 21st September – Jeremy Miles

***

Ian McKellen on Stage: with Tolkien, Shakespeare, Others & You – Lighthouse, Poole (Tuesday 2nd July 2019)

This was a joyful evening – a masterclass from one of our finest actors on how to hold an audience absolutely spellbound. When Sir Ian McKellen announced last year that he was going to celebrate his 80th birthday (it happened on 25th May by the way ) and would be raising funds for theatres, with a new solo show touring 80 stages across the UK, no one really knew what to expect.

He hinted it would be a mixture of anecdote and acting including, as the title suggests, some Tolkien, Shakespeare and perhaps a bit of interaction with the audience.

All I can say is that this show is all of that and more, much more. It’s a tour de force that celebrates McKellen’s long and illustrious career with enormous energy, passion and above all humour.

It doesn’t take long before you realise that, despite his much garlanded career as an actor, he could just as easily have been a cutting edge stand-up.

From the opening Gandalf speech from Lord of the Rings to the final lines from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, we see McKellen reviewing a  very serious career but one that he has always regarded with a twinkle in his eye.

Armed with just a box of props, he delivers wonderful anecdotes describing his northern childhood in Wigan and Bolton, his early love of the theatre, his gay awakening watching the Welsh actor/composer Ivor Novello and his later ‘coming out’ at the age of 48.  

There are stories too about his activism, his scholarship to Cambridge and his subsequent career in the theatre from weekly rep to the classical stage. There are the big names he’s met along the way, his knighthood and how he nearly decided that rather than be an actor he wanted to go into hotel management. Fortunately, unlike Cambridge University, the Blackpool Catering College turned him down.

Alongside his readings from Shakespeare and the classics, McKellen also displays his tremendous range as an actor and raconteur, camping it up outrageously for instance as he pays tribute to panto while showing  the audience his ‘Twankey’. 

Proceeds from the show will go towards Bright Sparks, a programme that enables and inspires talented people in Dorset to develop professionally across the arts sector.

Footnote: This wasn’t the first time that Ian McKellen had been on the Lighthouse stage. He first appeared there 40 years ago in a performance of Twelfth Night.

That was a show he is unlikely to forget. As he attempted to access the stage via the auditorium (a direction written into the play) he found his way barred by an over-zealous usherette who told him he couldn’t come in without a ticket. A dumbfounded McKellen gestured to the fact that he was wearing full doublet and hose and pleaded: “Do I look like a member of the audience?” The penny finally dropped and the usherette let him pass – Jeremy Miles

Burn the Floor: Lighthouse, Poole (Thursday 9th May, 2019)

If the fevered imagination of our celebrity-fixated tabloid press is to be believed, dancer Kevin Clifton’s sex life would render him barely capable of executing a gentle waltz.

Indeed only this week they claimed that Strictly bosses are lining him up with a ‘no nonsense battle-axe” in the next series for fear that he’ll be irresistibly drawn to his celebrity partner.

Not that Kevin cares. From the stage of Poole’s Lighthouse last night he dismissed most of the press speculation as “nonsense” and even though he went on to claim that several close friends had been “offered tens of thousands of pounds to say negative things about me”, he shrugged the media intrusion off.

His revelations came towards the end of a dynamic show which featured a surprising amount of talking alongside a spectacular high-energy feast of dance. Combining amazing choreography and routines that encompass the essence of classic dances like cha cha, samba, jive and paso doble, Burn the Floor is the show that Kevin credits with saving his dance career.

When he joined the company a decade ago he was fed up with the competitive ballroom world. With its rebellious energy, it revitalised his love for dance. The rest is history. He acknowledges that without Burn the Floor he would never have joined Strictly.

Starring in this show alongside two other Strictly pros – Graziano Di Prima  and Johannes Radebe – Kevin and the company almost literally burned the floor such was the intensity of their dancing.

The energy was extraordinary, the costumes were striking and, with music performed by a four piece band plus three live singers, there was something for everyone. The dances featured incredibly inventive choreography to music from that ranged from James Brown and Prince to Led Zeppelin, Robbie Williams and even Leonard Cohen.

It ended with a barnstorming version of With a Little Help From My Friends – the Joe Cocker arrangement rather than The Beatles – before segueing into a hyper-boisterous reading of The Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz. What a night!

There was even a public  declaration of love from Graziano to his new fiancee, fellow Burn the Floor dancer Giada Lini

Oh and just in case you’re wondering, Kevin did mention his own special friend, Stacey Dooley, but only to thank her for helping him become the reigning Strictly champion – Jeremy Miles

War Horse: The Mayflower Theatre, Southampton (Wednesday 30th May, 2018)

More than a decade after its stunning theatrical debut, War Horse continues to thrill audiences as both spectacular theatre and a moving condemnation of the heartless cruelty of war.

The essential spirit of Michael Morpurgo’s original story about the devastation of the Great War told through the ordeal of country boy Albert Narracott and his beloved horse Joey is beautifully enhanced by this extraordinary National Theatre production. Skilfully adapated by Nick Stafford, it features wonderfully constructed puppet-horses from the award-winning Handspring Company. They are extraordinary creatures brought to life by their oprators with incredible movement and choreography.

Directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris, this heart-rending drama finds Albert signing up as an underage soldier and leaving the only life he knows in rural Devon to head for the battlefields of the Western Front. His mission is to find Joey who has been sold to the Army as a war horse by his drunken father. 

The living hell that greets him is almost beyond comprehension as, swords drawn, the cavalry charge hopelessly into an endless barrage of enemy machine gun fire.  Men and horses lie torn to shreds amid the mud and the blood and razor-wire but somehow Albert and Joey survive.

War Horse is a powerful, sweeping drama, superbly staged with nuanced work from a skilful ensemble cast. Thomas Dennis as Albert evokes the enthusiasm and joyful naivety of youth gradually replaced by a world-weary sadness, desperation and determination as he searches for the horse that he has raised since it was a foal. 

By the time they  find each other there isn’t a dry eye in the house. War Horse is about the tragedy of war, the mindless brutality of battle, the indiscriminate lottery of fate and those special people who have an intuitive, almost telepathic, communication with animals. One hundred years on from the war that was supposed to end all wars it’s a timely reminder of the cost of such pointless and bitter conflict -Jeremy Miles

****

The Vodka Hunters: 3 Wickham Road, Boscombe (Thursday 27th April, 2018)

The poor, battered borough of Boscombe has a terrible reputation.  

Believe all you read and you’d never set foot in the place.

Drugs, booze, crime, homelessness, poverty… it sounds desperately bleak and of course, for those trapped in a self-destructive spiral, it certainly is. But guess what? There’s a very real upside. Some of the people marginalised by society, beaten into near submission by alcohol, substance abuse and circumstance are extraordinarily talented writers, thinkers and musicians.

So it is truly refreshing to see the Bournemouth Emerging Arts Fringe, which opened yesterday (Friday), providing a platform that positively shouts about the creativity that exists in the much maligned recovery community.

The Vodka Hunters, a powerful site-specific performance piece, is staged in a near-derelict former medical supplies depot in the Boscombe back streets.  It features four writers – Gary Pierre, Jane Cartwright, Cecelia Gail and Scott Lavene – who all originally honed their talents after arriving in Bournemouth for rehab. Veterans of the Vita Nova writing programme led by award-winning playwright Nell Leyshon, they have each turned their lives around or at least are in the process of doing so.

 Reunited with Leyshon as lead writer and director, these recovering drug and alcohol addicts each delivered a personal story, all the more poignant for being beautifully written and performed.

There were terrible tales of blackouts, near-death experiences, violence, prison, partners lost to suicide and children taken into care. Yet there was an element of humour and a running thread about parenting which ended with great hope as the final performer Scott Lavene, accompanying himself on piano, related his story of discovering that a new girlfriend was pregnant. It could have ended so badly. Apparently her parents were none too pleased when they discovered that the father of their daughter’s baby was a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. But people are amazing and they can change. Or as Jane Cartwright put it: “We are born many times and each time there is hope and a chance to begin again…to write a new ending.” -Jeremy Miles

****

The Weir: Lighthouse, Poole. Tuesday 7th November, 2017

Back in the 90s this wonderfully atmospheric drama won its author, Conor McPherson, an Olivier Award for Best New Play.

Two decades on it remains a chilling modern classic and is still weaving its dark magic in this 20th anniversary co-production by English Touring Theatre and Mercury Theatre, Colchester.

Set on a dark stormy night in a rural community in Ireland, it finds a group of regulars exchanging banter and spooky tales in their local pub. Tonight they are joined by a newcomer – a smart young woman from Dublin who is renting a local house.

We watch as the drink flows and local garage owner Jack (Sean Murray), his sometime assistant Jim (John O’Dowd) and businessman Finbar (Louis Dempsey) start relating stories of strange and possibly supernatural occurrences. The woman, Valerie, (Natalie Radmall-Quirke) listens intently.

Publican Brendan (Sam O’Mahoney) supplies the whiskey and Guinness. He is genial and helpful but a little non-plussed by the presence of Valerie whose request for white wine causes him to scurry off and search his house for an undrunk Christmas present which is then served in a half pint glass.

As the evening wears on Valerie finally reveals her own story, a shocking tale that explains why beneath her cheery demeanour there have been occasional glimpses of a deep melancholia.

  The Weir (which is the name of the pub by the way) offers some wonderful dialogue, a delicate balance of humour and tension and an astute observation of the relationships between essentially lonely and isolated people in a remote community. They all live a life tinged with regret and Brendan’s pub offers some kind or refuge from their unfulfilled lives.

A strong cast under director Adele Thomas breath life into the rhythms and nuance of Conor McPherson’s play. An excellent set and great lighting and sound evoke the kind of down-at-heel pub that ostensibly has nothing going for it but is given character by the customers who use it.

*The Weir is at Lighthouse, Poole, until Saturday – Jeremy Miles

***

Al Murray:Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne. (Thursday 6th april, 2017)

The current political malaise that’s gripping our nation should be comedy gold for Al Murray’s boorish, bigoted pub landlord.

But maybe Brexit is just too much for the petulant pint-puller. There is simply so much material out there that Murray is quite literally spoiled for choice.

That doesn’t stop one of the quickest wits in live stage comedy going for it big-time of course and the resulting show is very funny indeed. However he somehow has to fit sexism, ageism, anti-semitism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia and crass stupidity into his irony-laden routine and that’s before he’s even started on immigration.

The problem is all this horrible stuff seems a lot closer to home than at any time since the landlord first opened his boozer back in the early 90s. Of course satire should never feel too comfortable but somehow things have shifted and the world of the pub landlord isn’t quite as hilarious as it used to be.

Murray is a masterful performer though and manoeuvres his way adeptly around the woes of living in 21st century Britain.

The landlord’s answer to our current problems is to create unity – a combined front against all this dreadful progress.  Indeed he even has a pithy slogan: Let’s Go Backwards Together. He admits that he was a tad alarmed when he worked out that the initial letters spelled out something else entirely but, hey-ho, there is even a song.

We sang along with gusto of course while Murray (or was it the landlord?) manipulated the audience with a frankly frightening degree of control. Despite minor misgivings I felt this was a brilliant evening performed by a superb and compelling performer.

*Al Murray is back for a second night at The Tivoli Theatre tonight (Friday 7th April). – Jeremy Miles

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Round the Horne: 50th anniversary tour, Lighthouse, Pool

What never ceases to amaze and delight about Round the Horne is that half-a-century ago it not only got past the notoriously over-zealous BBC censors but became required Sunday lunchtime listening for families all over Britain.

Laden with gay innuendo and camp as could be, it was broadcast at a time when homosexual relationships between consenting men were not yet legal and being outed as ‘queer’ could destroy reputations and even lead to lengthy jail sentences. Yet at the height of its popularity (it ran for two years from 1965) an astonishing 15 million listeners tuned in. It managed to entertain middle England and its maiden aunts with barely a hint of controversy.

Of course Round the Horne was also marvellously funny and, though it made a mockery of the callous law against homosexuality that would eventually be repealed in 1967, it certainly wasn’t an exclusively gay programme. It worked because it was hosted by the ultimate straight man, Kenneth Horne, written by a brilliant team including Barry Took and Marty Feldman, and packed full of genuinely inventive comedy and marvellous characters.

This 50th anniversary stage production catches the flavour of that original radio show perfectly. Its main players – Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick and Betty Marsden – live once more courtesy of Colin Elmer, Alex Scott Fairley and Eve Winters. 

With Julian Howard McDowell as Kenneth Horne and Alan Booty as continuity presenter Douglas Smith the audience is treated to a re-run of a couple of classic shows as they are recorded at the BBC’s Paris Theatre in Regent’s Street. There’s even a sound-effects man, Miles Russell, to add appropriate noises, music and authenticity. 

It works a treat. All the familiar faces are there. Rambling Syd Rumpo, Daphne Whitethigh, Seamus Android, J. Peasemold Gruntfuttock, Dame Celia Molestrangler and Pinkie Huckaback, and of course Julian and Sandy. Great stuff and, to borrow their own polari phraseology, I have to say it was bona to varda their dolly old eeks again.

*Round the Horne plays Lighthouse at Poole again tonight (Saturday 18th February – Jeremy Miles

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The Shining: The Chine Hotel, Boscombe. (Thurday 9th February, 2017).

Pioneering theatre director David Glass didn’t hesitate when he was offered the chance to use Boscombe’s Chine Hotel to stage a special production of The Shining.

“I immediately saw its potential,” he says. And no wonder. The Chine, which sits high above Boscombe Gardens, bears an uncanny resemblance to The Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1980 film version of Stephen King’s game-changer of a horror story. Like its fictional counterpart it is even closed for the winter.

 Thanks to Glass and an inspired team from the Arts University Bournemouth the next week finds audiences being led twice nightly around The Chine’s historic rooms as the murderous tale of winter caretaker Jack Torrence, haunted, twisted and gradually turned into a crazed axeman by demons from the past, unfolds.

I joined the audience for last night’s opening performance. It was an extraordinary and immersive experience with brilliant use of sound, light, multiple actors and a variety of in-house locations bringing the story of The Shining to graphic and satisfyingly unsettling life.

Excellent performances, courageous direction and the atmosphere of The Chine itself succeeded in doing the near-impossible by getting to the essence of King’s novel with a theatrical flashback to Kubrick’s movie. Carefully edited, the high-points of the film’s dialogue remain intact although some have been gently tweaked to enhance the tension and inject moments of dark humour.

Anyone who loved the movie with Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duval will be pleasantly surprised. And just in case you’re wondering whether Nicholson’s classic “Here’s Johnny” scene is re-enacted. Let’s just leave it with the fact that I  can’t say that doors weren’t harmed in the course of the production.

Of course The Shining offers much more than the gore at the core of the story. It is above all a sad comment on the death of the American dream torn to shreds by misogyny, racism and paranoia. Never in the 40 years of its existence has this tale been as relevant as it is today.  

*The Shining plays The Chine Hotel in Boscombe Spa Road, Bournemouth at 6.30pm and 9.00pm every night except Sunday (12th Feb)  until  Saturday 18th February -Jeremy Miles

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French Without Tears: Lighthouse, Poole (Wednesday 9th November 2016)

This was the play that, in 1936, propelled the young Terence Rattigan to early success. Rattigan would go on to become one of the most popularplaywrights of the mid 20th century penning such respected dramas as The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version and The Deep Blue Sea. But it was French Without Tears that put him on the theatrical map and marked him out as singular talent with a superb eye for observation. 

It is good to see this astute comedy, set across the channel in a pre-war crammer where a group of upper middle class Englishmen are struggling to learn French in a desperate bid to boost their careers, getting a rare revival. A talented cast directed by Paul Miller make the very most of Rattigan’s  exploration of the English male abroad, behaving like naughty schoolboys and terrified by the attentions of a young temptress.

There’s some marvellous acting, particularly from Joe Eyre as Kit Neilan, a young wannabe diplomat and Tim Delap as uptight Naval Commander Bill Rogers. The students of Monsieur Maingot’s language school are hapless individuals in a complete tizzy over the attentions of the vampish Diana Lake (Florence Roberts) but oblivious to real romance when they see it.

Distressed by their confusion they resolve to get blind drunk at a fancy dress ball leading to a wonderful scene of post party chaos. Eventually they realise that French isn’t the language they must learn. They need to understand the the language of love too.

It was nice to see this play being staged in Poole. Rattigan knew this part of the south coast well. Two of his best known work, Separate Tables and Cause Celebre, are set, at least in part, in nearby Bournemouth.

*French Without Tears runs at Lighthouse, Poole, until Saturday 12th November – Jeremy Miles