On 4 June 1976 at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall, the Sex Pistols played a gig voted (along with Woodstock and Live Aid) as one of the most influential of all time; thousands claim to have been in the 150-capacity venue, which was less than a third full, but some of those who were went on to form massively influential bands such as Buzzcocks, The Smiths, The Fall and Joy Division / New Order, not to mention Factory Records and The Haçienda.
A year later, the Queen had her Silver Jubilee in the year Never Mind The Bollocks was released (“God save the Queen / The fascist regime”), then in 1978 punk had its own Jubilee in the form of Derek Jarman’s film of that name, starring some major punk and alternative music figures including Toyah, Adam Ant, Siouxsie Sioux, Richard O’Brien, Little Nell, Jordan and Lindsay Kemp.
Toyah Willcox returns to the world of Jubilee but this time as Queen Elizabeth I, whose magician John Dee (Harold Finley) conjures up the spirit Ariel (Lucy Ellinson) – it gets quite Shakespearean in a few places – to transport her forwards in time, not to the broken, depressed streets of the 1970s but straight to the squat of Amyl Nitrate and her fellow residents, now translated into the 21st century.
• Continue reading at British Theatre Guide.
Toyah Willcox stars in Chris Goode’s 40th anniversary production
There is an innate theatricality to Derek Jarman’s cult film. A punk classic celebrating its 40th anniversary next year, Jubilee zaps Queen Elizabeth I into a destitute contemporary Britain. Buckingham Palace has been sold off to a music label and turned into recording studios. The rest of the country has been left to rot and, in the wastelands, anarchic girl gangs and queer artists run riot, shagging and killing anything in sight. They could be the sisters of Anthony Burgess’ droogs – just better dressed.
Designer Chloe Lamford turns the whole Royal Exchange into their squat. Union Jacks are strewn from the balconies. Graffiti is scrawled all over the walls so that political slogans and swearwords fight for space.
• Continue reading at What’s On Stage.
Nihilism, nudity, no future: Derek Jarman’s bleak Britain comes pungently to the stage – Jubilee, Royal Exchange, Manchester, review
How do you take a defining film from the punk era and reconceive it for the stage, 40 years on, when the V-flicking message of punk was “no future”?
Derek Jarman’s 1978 vision of Britannia sinking below the waves during the flag-waving year of the Silver Jubilee revelled in images of dystopian collapse: post-industrial wastelands, dismal interiors that no yet-to-be-conceived TV makeover programme could spruce up, random acts of senseless violence. It was Beckett’s Endgame meets A Clockwork Orange, with melancholy traces of Shakespeare – and it was designed to look like the end of the world was nigh.
Yet here we now are, and many of the gobbing youths of yesteryear turned out fine, some of them doing very nicely indeed thanks to the Thatcher revolution (Malcolm McLaren, “godfather” of punk, at least had the grace and courage to acknowledge that, recalling a “failed, miserable country” before her arrival).
• Continue reading at The Telegraph.
Buried secrets have a way of coming back to bite people – even if the secrets they’re trying to protect are not their own. That’s the idea behind Mitu Misra’s new thriller, Lies We Tell, which stars Gabriel Byrne and Harvey Keitel. We have an exclusive look at the first trailer for the film, along with its UK quad poster.
When his billionaire boss Demi (Keitel) dies, chauffeur Donald (Byrne) is given one final job – to wipe out any evidence of Demi’s relationship with his mistress, the enigmatic and beautiful Amber (Sibylla Deen). Donald’s task soon unravels when Amber’s life is threatened, and he finds himself her reluctant protector. Unwittingly drawn into a dangerous urban underworld, he encounters dark, harrowing practices, and a sinister underworld figure who will test him to his very limits…
Positioning itself in the tradition of the original Get Carter and Mike Figgis’ Stormy Monday, the film is based on a story by Misra, with the script coming from Ewen Glass and Andy McDermott. With Mark Addy, Gina McKee and Toyah Willcox also in the film, Lies We Tell will be in UK and US cinemas on 2 February.
• Continue reading at Empire. Browse our Lies We Tell news.
This week’s best theatre shows: Our critics’ picks (November 7)
Jubilee – Royal Exchange, Manchester
Chris Goode’s new stage adaptation of Derek Jarman’s iconic chronicle of the 1970s punk scene opens in Manchester on November 7. Promising to be a remix for a new generation it stars Toyah Willcox, who also appeared in the original.
• Continue reading at The Stage.
The final preview of Jubilee took place at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester last night. View production shots of Toyah as Queen Elizabeth I at Twitter and Instagram. Click below to book tickets. (Photo © Johan Persson)
More mid-November Sky Arts airdates for the classic episode of Tales Of The Unexpected, ‘Blue Marigold’, starring Toyah in the lead role.
Tales Of The Unexpected: Sky Arts: Monday 13th November: 1.30pm
Tales Of The Unexpected: Sky Arts: Tuesday 14th November: 1.30am/9.30am
Tales Of The Unexpected: Sky Arts: Saturday 18th November: 8.30am
Blue Marigold. Series 5, Episode 1. Dropped by her agency for her diva-like behaviour, supermodel Marigold’s mental health deteriorates. Years later, she plots a comeback. Director: Giles Foster. Starring: Toyah Willcox, Ralph Bates, Sharon Duce, Helen Fraser, Billy Hamon, Edward Jewesbury.
• View a larger version of the cover by clicking above. Scans of the other pages and interview are here, here and here. (Thanks to Paul Lomas for the scans)
15.11.2017. In Conversation: Toyah Willcox with Dave Haslam at Royal Exchange.
The Royal Exchange is currently running a stage adaptation of Derek Jarman’s film, Jubilee (read our preview). And later this month, fans can spend an evening with Toyah Willcox, one of the stars of the play (and indeed the original film). She will be talking to the journalist and author Dave Haslam. They won’t be short of things to discuss, as Toyah has had a long, storied career not only as an actor, but also as a musician and writer. She first broke through in the late seventies as a punk pioneer. Around the same time, she starred in both Quadrophenia and another Jarman film, The Tempest. Over the years, she has appeared many more movies, TV shows AND released 24 albums. Recently, she wrote a book detailing her experiences with plastic surgery. Despite all this, she’s still best known to some as the narrator of Teletubbies.
• Continue reading at Manchester Wire.
Toyah guested on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme on Thursday afternoon, discussing Jubilee at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester (and Teletubbies) with Colin Paterson.
• The interview begins at around 46 minutes into the show and runs for approximately five minutes, including a very short play of It’s A Mystery. Listen at BBC iPlayer Radio.
• West End Theatre: Toyah Willcox to star in stage adaptation of punk film Jubilee: Legendary punk warrior and actress Toyah Willcox will star in a stage adaption of Derek Jarman’s seminal punk film Jubilee. Forty years after Jarman’s film captured punk at its giddy height, the new stage adaption remixes it for the social and political turmoil of 2017 – Continue reading…
• Creative Tourist: Unmissable things to do in Manchester and the North: Jubilee at the Royal Exchange – It’s 40 years since the heyday of the punk movement. An anarchic expression of contempt for society’s stagnation, it produced some of the most interesting (and angriest) music of the ‘70s, much of which has stood the test of time. Now the Royal Exchange is turning one of the iconic films of the era – Jubilee – into a theatre piece, complete with spikey punk soundtrack – Continue reading…
• The Telegraph: Cast of play rebels over reference to Myra Hindley as a ‘hero’, forcing director to delete lines: Toyah Willcox, who was in the film and is now in the play, said that using the lines in the city where Hindley and Ian Brady operated would have “undermined the whole play” – Continue reading…
• BBC News: Manchester theatre cuts Myra Hindley hero-worship lines: A new play in Manchester has cut lines about Moors Murderer Myra Hindley being “a true artist” and a “hero” for fear of offending the audience. The 1978 punk film Jubilee has been adapted for the Royal Exchange theatre – Continue reading…
• The Guardian: Don’t condemn sound judgment as PC behaviour: A stage production of Derek Jarman’s 1978 film, Jubilee, has had lines removed where a character expresses admiration for Myra Hindley… Toyah Willcox, who was in the film, and now appears in the play, was against retaining the lines and made the point that Jarman would have originally included them for shock value – Continue reading…
Maigret: ITV Encore: Thursday 16th November: 12.05pm
Maigret: ITV Encore: Friday 17th November: 5am
Maigret and the Hotel Majestic. Crime series featuring Georges Simenon’s celebrated Parisian detective. Maigret is called to the scene when a beautiful woman is found dead in the basement of the Hotel Majestic with a gun in her handbag. The Chief Inspector’s investigations initially centre around the staff at the hotel – until he discovers that the woman’s husband booked a trip to Rome that he never made. Starring: Michael Gambon, Geoffrey Hutchings, Michael Shannon, Toyah Willcox (1993).
Toyah Willcox: ‘I’d rather have been a 70s punk than be young today’
After playing a member of the anarchic and murderous girl gang in the 1978 punk film Jubilee, actress and singer Toyah Willcox is revisiting the story in its first stage version. Is she still punk, 40 years on?
“I can’t live in a world of dullards,” Toyah says. “So I think on that level, I’m definitely punk.”
Toyah, who forged an acting career while also making her name as a pop star, is still rebelling against the expectations of society – in her own way. “For me, it’s non-conformist,” she says. “I’m just not interested in the norm. The only example I can give you is I can’t go to a hairdresser and talk about holidays. I just don’t live in that world. It’s not me.”
Being punk means something different in 2017 compared with 1977. But the world’s a different place now, and Toyah is almost 60.
• Continue reading at BBC News.
A well-known local singer performed in front of a capacity crowd at the Music at Stow Festival.
Toyah Willcox, who has amassed thirteen top 40 singles, acted in fifteen feature films and presented such diverse television programmes as The Good Sex Guide and Songs Of Praise song at St Edward’s Church.
The star, who lives in Pershore, with her rock-star husband Robert Fripp of King Crimson fame, presented the evening in the form of a trip down memory lane, illustrated with songs, film clips, photos and some very entertaining name-dropping from her wide-ranging career.
• Continue reading at the Cotswold Journal.
“1st night has arrived. Soooooo excited“. Jubilee opened at the Royal Exchange Theatre last night. Click below to view the full version of the photo Toyah tweeted. (Photo © Toyah Willcox)
The Look of Love: Photographer Brian Griffin on shooting Depeche Mode, the Bunnymen, Kim Wilde and the stars of 1980s Pop
There were so many nightmares,” Brian Griffin tells me. “People who cared about their hair too much. People who were totally uninterested in being photographed.
“There would have always been a member of the band who was a pain in the arse. There would have been a member of the band who looked awful, who was not very photogenic …” He thinks about that a moment and then adds, “It would generally be the drummer.”
Back in the day Griffin took pictures of pop stars. You will have seen them. You might even own some of them. His work appeared in music magazines (the Face, i-D, NME) and on single bags and album covers. If you were buying records at the end of the 1970s or at the start of the 80s it’s more than likely you will know Griffin’s images. Elvis Costello on a diving board (a picture that features in the inner sleeve of Armed Forces), Echo and the Bunnymen snowed in in Iceland (the cover of their album Porcupine) or on a beach in Porthcawl (Heaven Up Here), a topless Billy Idol (for the cover of his album Rebel Yell). All of them bear Griffin’s signature.
• Continue reading at Herald Scotland. ‘Pop’, by Brian Griffin and Terry Rawlings, is published on 31st October and is available to pre-order at Amazon – Click on the photo above. (Photo © Brian Griffin)
Toyah guested on Becky Want’s BBC Radio Manchester show yesterday, chatting about Jubilee, turning 60, performing gigs all year, punk and more.
Becky speaks to Toyah Willcox about her return to the stage in Jubilee, an adaptation of the Derek Jarman film, which first came out for the Queen’s Jubilee.
• The interview begins at around 1hr 47m into the show, after a blast of It’s A Mystery, and runs for approximately 30 minutes (includes a break for news/music). Listen at BBC iPlayer Radio.
Chris Goode: Everything I know about theatre, I learned first from Derek Jarman
Almost everything I think I know about theatre, I learned from someplace else. Sometimes it’s just easier to spot the clues about theatre that are encoded in some other kind of event or relationship. You glancingly recognise something and immediately know you want to take it into your next rehearsal room.
Something about the obliqueness of the angle matches the radical hospitality of theatre. The understanding that the wholly new and unexpected is ready to rush in and surround us, if only we can remember that we come to theatre not to make things, but to make spaces for things to happen in.
Several years ago, I wrote a blog post ridiculously entitled “The young anarchosyndicalist’s guide to theatre space”…
• Continue reading at The Stage.
