Just an illusion...
Just an illusion...
6:02pm Monday 8th December 2008
By Hilary Porter
EVER had an offer you can't refuse? I have - it was a recent invitation from world-famous illusionists, The Twins.
"We'd like to put you on The Table of Death," was the somewhat macabre yet intriguing message on my answer-machine.
Now Wareham-based identical twins Paul and Gary Hardy-Brown are very charming, gentle-natured individuals.
But with the table booked - for a date that had nothing to do with dinner! - I wondered if this spine-tingling encounter with them was set to be one meeting too many.
Our rendezvous was at an aircraft hangar at Bournemouth Airport where, cloaked in secrecy, they had been designing and making their trademark large-scale magical illusions for the nation's major pantomimes.
As I arrived they were tinkering with some "magical" devices to try out on Christopher Biggins in Southampton Mayflower's musical pantomime Cinderella (which opens this weekend and runs until January 17).
I raise my hat to Biggins, who, on his way to winning last year's I'm a Celebrity … endured being swamped with rotten eggs, maggots, decaying fish and cockroaches, and managed to eat - after 15 minutes of chewing - a kangaroo penis and a dish of vomit-tasting witchetty grubs.
But had the twins managed to come up with a form or torture worse than any of the infamous Bushtucker Trials - all in the name of entertainment?
I was sworn to secrecy over their plans for Biggins and his Mayflower co-stars Matthew Kelly, Craig McLachlan and Stefanie Powers.
And they never did tell me what they have in store for Billy Pearce in Cinderella at the Bradford Alhambra.
But The Twins were able to give me a taste of the horrors that await John Barrowman, star of Doctor Who and Torchwood, as he headlines in Birmingham Hippodrome's production of Robin Hood.
Of course, Barrowman's TV character, Captain Jack Harkness, cannot be killed - only banished to another galaxy.
But, as I agreed to try out the illusion The Twins have lined up for him, I was all too aware of my own mortality.
Inside the bowels of the hangar, I came face to face with the monster Barrowman is set to meet - a huge solid air construction with 26 2ft spikes like menacing jaws ready to impale anyone who dares get too close.
Almost as soon as I arrived, Gary released a rope that set the 200-kilo vice crashing down.
"Would you like to try it out?" asked Paul.
Realising that these spikes are for real, and don't magically recede or disappear, I almost refused.
But the photographer was ready and waiting - and hadn't I promised to lie on their Table of Death?
It certainly felt like the point of no return as they shackled me with chains and padlocked cuffs, bolted my feet under an iron bar, chained my arms above my head and lay me down on the cold, hard table.
Escape was impossible. I was instantly reminded me of those medieval torture racks.
"I'm not Houdini, you know … you do know what you're doing … have Health and Safety looked at this?" I rambled.
Was it the coldness of the hangar or was I really shaking with fear as they proceeded to lower the spikes so they were almost touching my body?
I was terrified and pleaded with them not to let it go wrong. It would have been an instant, painful and bloody death had that slim rope slipped from their hands!
The Twins revealed that Titan - an 8ft steel robot that is conjured back from the future to aid the Sheriff of Nottingham's quest to defeat Robin Hood - would set fire to the rope each night that sends the spikes crashing down as John Barrowman lies chained on the table behind a curtain.
Apparently he has just seconds to escape to reappear in the audience.
It's a phenomenal piece of magic.
source: http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/features/3960182.Just_an_illusion___/
you can watch the video at the original site:
http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/video/videonews/63723
or if that gives you issues you can check out the YouTube upload:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1_ma2h2bTE
ETA: a panto article
Panto with a social care theme
Posted: 09 December 2008
writes Mark Drinkwater
Mark Drinkwater scours pantomime posters from around the country and discovers a host of productions portraying social care themes during the festive season
It's behind you! It's behind you! Actually, it's in front of you, and it's panto season. The most enduring appeal of pantomime is that there is something for all the family. The sheer number of faded television stars treading the boards this Christmas means that any show is guaranteed to give you and the visiting in-laws your very own reminiscence-therapy session.
The economic slump provides fertile material for pantos this year. At the Birmingham Hippodrome, singer and Dr Who star John Barrowman leads a cast of merry men in Robin Hood, showing that chancellor Alistair Darling is not the only one with wealth redistribution on his mind.
Dick Whittington, the original economic migrant escaping poverty, makes an appearance at Llandudno's Venue Cymru with John Challis - Boycie from Only Fools and Horses - playing King "Dirty" Rat.
Social workers visiting Jack and the Beanstalk at Darlington's Civic Theatre will feel for the young man driven to a life of petty thieving to escape destitution. Though save some of your sympathy for the lowly cast member who lost the toss to become the back end of the cow.
Toby Frow's adaptation of A Christmas Carol moves the story to Bristol and examines Dickens' themes of social injustice and poverty. The show features Tiny Tim, the relentlessly optimistic "invalid" son of Bob Cratchit, and the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge who seeks redemption. If only social work always resulted in such happy transformations.
Rehabilitation is a key element of panto revitalising the flagging careers of Z-listers and faded Hollywood stars. After all, Christmas is a time for charity. In Milton Keynes, Henry "The Fonz" Winkler plays the dastardly Captain Hook and in doing so does little to undermine the disabled-person-as-baddie stereotype. He's appearing in Peter Pan, the swashbuckling tale featuring the Lost Boys - JM Barie's original feral children. Louisa Lytton from The Bill plays the boy who never grew up. Clearly this "lad" has both gender and developmental issues to deal with.
Paul Michael Glaser, Starsky from Starsky and Hutch, trades California for sunny, er, Sunderland. He can be found playing the panto baddie Abanazar in Aladdin a role that will do little to improve local Anglo-Arab relations.
Glaser's former co-star Antonio Fargas, better known as Huggy Bear, also makes his panto debut in Snow White at the Broadway Theatre, Catford. Snow White is, of course, one of the more controversial pantos - particularly when productions use non-dwarf helpers.
If you have very young children, there are numerous excellent travelling puppet shows. Pick of the bunch is Garlic Theatre's Old Mother Hubbard. Cash-strapped Ma Hubbard looks in the cupboard only to find it bare. Glove puppets, singing teapots and musical treats explain all. Also worth a mention is Krazy Kat Theatre Company's Petrushka. Directed by deaf sign-songstress Caroline Parker, the show features integrated sign language throughout.
Many of the plots in today's pantomimes derive from the Grimm fairytales. Cinderella is the classic tale of slave labour and a wicked step-parent. In the Bristol Hippodrome production, acting legend Mickey Rooney plays Baron Hardup. He will appear alongside former and current Eastenders Michelle Collins and Bobby Davro. Cinderella certainly seems to be the preferred choice for Tinseltown's refugees as Steve Guttenburg, star of the Police Academy films, also appears in the pumpkin-filled panto in Bromley.
North of the border, the Scottish Youth Theatre gives a new twist to another Grimm tale. Its Sleeping Beauty takes children on a magical journey into Sleeping Beauty's castle. Our narcoleptic protagonist also makes an appearance at the Unicorn Theatre, London, in Rosy Fordham's reworking that leads Beauty on a race through time to meet the right prince.
So there you have it: slapstick, buffoonery, innuendo, family fallouts and the triumph of good over evil. Perhaps not so different from a day at the office. But unlike being at work, it's the one time of year when the booing isn't being directed at social workers.
To find out what's on near you visit www.bigpantoguide.co.uk
This article appears in the 11 December issue under the headline "Panto with a familiar feel"
source: http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2008/12/09/110212/panto-with-a-social-care-theme.html
6:02pm Monday 8th December 2008
By Hilary Porter
EVER had an offer you can't refuse? I have - it was a recent invitation from world-famous illusionists, The Twins.
"We'd like to put you on The Table of Death," was the somewhat macabre yet intriguing message on my answer-machine.
Now Wareham-based identical twins Paul and Gary Hardy-Brown are very charming, gentle-natured individuals.
But with the table booked - for a date that had nothing to do with dinner! - I wondered if this spine-tingling encounter with them was set to be one meeting too many.
Our rendezvous was at an aircraft hangar at Bournemouth Airport where, cloaked in secrecy, they had been designing and making their trademark large-scale magical illusions for the nation's major pantomimes.
As I arrived they were tinkering with some "magical" devices to try out on Christopher Biggins in Southampton Mayflower's musical pantomime Cinderella (which opens this weekend and runs until January 17).
I raise my hat to Biggins, who, on his way to winning last year's I'm a Celebrity … endured being swamped with rotten eggs, maggots, decaying fish and cockroaches, and managed to eat - after 15 minutes of chewing - a kangaroo penis and a dish of vomit-tasting witchetty grubs.
But had the twins managed to come up with a form or torture worse than any of the infamous Bushtucker Trials - all in the name of entertainment?
I was sworn to secrecy over their plans for Biggins and his Mayflower co-stars Matthew Kelly, Craig McLachlan and Stefanie Powers.
And they never did tell me what they have in store for Billy Pearce in Cinderella at the Bradford Alhambra.
But The Twins were able to give me a taste of the horrors that await John Barrowman, star of Doctor Who and Torchwood, as he headlines in Birmingham Hippodrome's production of Robin Hood.
Of course, Barrowman's TV character, Captain Jack Harkness, cannot be killed - only banished to another galaxy.
But, as I agreed to try out the illusion The Twins have lined up for him, I was all too aware of my own mortality.
Inside the bowels of the hangar, I came face to face with the monster Barrowman is set to meet - a huge solid air construction with 26 2ft spikes like menacing jaws ready to impale anyone who dares get too close.
Almost as soon as I arrived, Gary released a rope that set the 200-kilo vice crashing down.
"Would you like to try it out?" asked Paul.
Realising that these spikes are for real, and don't magically recede or disappear, I almost refused.
But the photographer was ready and waiting - and hadn't I promised to lie on their Table of Death?
It certainly felt like the point of no return as they shackled me with chains and padlocked cuffs, bolted my feet under an iron bar, chained my arms above my head and lay me down on the cold, hard table.
Escape was impossible. I was instantly reminded me of those medieval torture racks.
"I'm not Houdini, you know … you do know what you're doing … have Health and Safety looked at this?" I rambled.
Was it the coldness of the hangar or was I really shaking with fear as they proceeded to lower the spikes so they were almost touching my body?
I was terrified and pleaded with them not to let it go wrong. It would have been an instant, painful and bloody death had that slim rope slipped from their hands!
The Twins revealed that Titan - an 8ft steel robot that is conjured back from the future to aid the Sheriff of Nottingham's quest to defeat Robin Hood - would set fire to the rope each night that sends the spikes crashing down as John Barrowman lies chained on the table behind a curtain.
Apparently he has just seconds to escape to reappear in the audience.
It's a phenomenal piece of magic.
source: http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/features/3960182.Just_an_illusion___/
you can watch the video at the original site:
http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/video/videonews/63723
or if that gives you issues you can check out the YouTube upload:
Click to viewhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1_ma2h2bTE
ETA: a panto article
Panto with a social care theme
Posted: 09 December 2008
writes Mark Drinkwater
Mark Drinkwater scours pantomime posters from around the country and discovers a host of productions portraying social care themes during the festive season
It's behind you! It's behind you! Actually, it's in front of you, and it's panto season. The most enduring appeal of pantomime is that there is something for all the family. The sheer number of faded television stars treading the boards this Christmas means that any show is guaranteed to give you and the visiting in-laws your very own reminiscence-therapy session.
The economic slump provides fertile material for pantos this year. At the Birmingham Hippodrome, singer and Dr Who star John Barrowman leads a cast of merry men in Robin Hood, showing that chancellor Alistair Darling is not the only one with wealth redistribution on his mind.
Dick Whittington, the original economic migrant escaping poverty, makes an appearance at Llandudno's Venue Cymru with John Challis - Boycie from Only Fools and Horses - playing King "Dirty" Rat.
Social workers visiting Jack and the Beanstalk at Darlington's Civic Theatre will feel for the young man driven to a life of petty thieving to escape destitution. Though save some of your sympathy for the lowly cast member who lost the toss to become the back end of the cow.
Toby Frow's adaptation of A Christmas Carol moves the story to Bristol and examines Dickens' themes of social injustice and poverty. The show features Tiny Tim, the relentlessly optimistic "invalid" son of Bob Cratchit, and the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge who seeks redemption. If only social work always resulted in such happy transformations.
Rehabilitation is a key element of panto revitalising the flagging careers of Z-listers and faded Hollywood stars. After all, Christmas is a time for charity. In Milton Keynes, Henry "The Fonz" Winkler plays the dastardly Captain Hook and in doing so does little to undermine the disabled-person-as-baddie stereotype. He's appearing in Peter Pan, the swashbuckling tale featuring the Lost Boys - JM Barie's original feral children. Louisa Lytton from The Bill plays the boy who never grew up. Clearly this "lad" has both gender and developmental issues to deal with.
Paul Michael Glaser, Starsky from Starsky and Hutch, trades California for sunny, er, Sunderland. He can be found playing the panto baddie Abanazar in Aladdin a role that will do little to improve local Anglo-Arab relations.
Glaser's former co-star Antonio Fargas, better known as Huggy Bear, also makes his panto debut in Snow White at the Broadway Theatre, Catford. Snow White is, of course, one of the more controversial pantos - particularly when productions use non-dwarf helpers.
If you have very young children, there are numerous excellent travelling puppet shows. Pick of the bunch is Garlic Theatre's Old Mother Hubbard. Cash-strapped Ma Hubbard looks in the cupboard only to find it bare. Glove puppets, singing teapots and musical treats explain all. Also worth a mention is Krazy Kat Theatre Company's Petrushka. Directed by deaf sign-songstress Caroline Parker, the show features integrated sign language throughout.
Many of the plots in today's pantomimes derive from the Grimm fairytales. Cinderella is the classic tale of slave labour and a wicked step-parent. In the Bristol Hippodrome production, acting legend Mickey Rooney plays Baron Hardup. He will appear alongside former and current Eastenders Michelle Collins and Bobby Davro. Cinderella certainly seems to be the preferred choice for Tinseltown's refugees as Steve Guttenburg, star of the Police Academy films, also appears in the pumpkin-filled panto in Bromley.
North of the border, the Scottish Youth Theatre gives a new twist to another Grimm tale. Its Sleeping Beauty takes children on a magical journey into Sleeping Beauty's castle. Our narcoleptic protagonist also makes an appearance at the Unicorn Theatre, London, in Rosy Fordham's reworking that leads Beauty on a race through time to meet the right prince.
So there you have it: slapstick, buffoonery, innuendo, family fallouts and the triumph of good over evil. Perhaps not so different from a day at the office. But unlike being at work, it's the one time of year when the booing isn't being directed at social workers.
To find out what's on near you visit www.bigpantoguide.co.uk
This article appears in the 11 December issue under the headline "Panto with a familiar feel"
source: http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2008/12/09/110212/panto-with-a-social-care-theme.html