Dreamscape – Toyah Willcox Fansite

There’s a great new Toyah feature/review, of last month’s Proud, Loud & Electric gig at The Garage, just published at the Retro Man Blog.

Toyah + The Tuesday Club at The Garage Islington London

So, be honest now, what was your first gig? Mine wasn’t The Sex Pistols at the 100 Club Punk Festival, or The Who at Leeds University Refectory. I didn’t see Iggy smear peanut butter all over himself while crowd surfing at the Cincinnati Pop Festival and I never saw The Clash at the Victoria Park Rock Against Racism Rally. Nope, my first ever gig was Toyah on June 06th 1981 at the Hammersmith Odeon, the “Anthem Tour” in fact and I was 15 years old. Now, why I should feel a little bit guilty admitting this I’m not sure, but you know how snobby us music fans can be sometimes. But as Toyah herself might say, I should be “proud, loud and heard” and not try to cover up the facts just because it might not be thought of as very “cool”. However, your first gig is rather like your first kiss, buying your first 7” single or going to your first football match, it’s something that stays with you forever. Due to many and varied reasons it was impossible for me to get to many gigs in my teenage years so the whole experience of that first live show was magical.

• Continue reading at Retro Man Blog.

• Beyond The Joke: Film Review – Aaaaaaaah!: One thing is certain. You won’t see another film like Aaaaaaaah! this year. Or, probably, any year. And not just because Steve Oram’s directorial debut has no dialogue except for ape-like grunts, but also because it features Toyah Willcox having a shit in a kitchen and Noel Fielding getting his knob gobbled in a seedy cameo – Continue reading…

• Bloodguts: Aaaaaaaah!: Ever wondered what would happen if our evolution stopped part way through? What if we became the appearance of what we become with the mentality and attitude of the apes that came before us? Wonder no more as the premise behind ‘Aaaaaaaah!’ is just that… The performances of the cast are next to brilliant and watching Toyah Willcox slam a steak across a wall in imitation to something she has seen is a true reflection of how influential Oram is as a creative. If you can get the stars of The Mighty Boosh, Toyah Willcox and Tony Way to play a complete film with no sound except that of a monkey and mimic their actions in a way that becomes believable, then Steve Oram, you have our attention – Continue reading…

• Pissed Off Geek: ‘Aaaaaaaah!’ Review: There are some movies that are brave and they present something to the audience that is truly different. Aaaaaaaah! is a film that may be hard to acclimatise yourself to and will be outside of your comfort zone, but once it grabs you it won’t let go – Continue reading…

• Close-Up Film: Aaaaaaaah! Close-Up Film Review: Can you imagine what a Mike Leigh film would look like if the actors based all their lines/noises, behaviour and interactions on several hours of Richard Attenborough narrated Ape documentaries? If you can then you will have pictured something close to Steve Oram’s disquieting directorial debut Aaaaaaaah! – Continue reading…

• Electric Sheep: Aaaaaaaah!: Also caught in the adventure is Julian Rhind-Tutt playing an alpha male scoffing in front of a brand new plasma screen and playing video games; Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding from the surrealistic The Mighty Boosh; and Toyah Willcox, who played Miranda in Derek Jarman’s Tempest (1979) but also, prophetically, Monkey in Quadrophenia (1979), and who plays the leading female part. With Willcox came Robert Fripp, who happens to be her husband and who improvised a bewitching music that advantageously compensates the total absence of articulate dialogue. (And make sure you stay for the final credits if you are a King Crimson fan.) – Continue reading…

In his directorial debut, Sightseers star Steve Oram delivers a remarkable film that satirises human behaviour with apeshit craziness.

Set in a superficially recognisable South London of semi-detached houses, football pitches and fashionable clothing boutiques, Aaaaaaaah! nevertheless offers an alternate reality that entirely eschews dialogue for primal grunts and gesticulations, with civilisation repeatedly shown to be a thin veneer over simian wildness.

Aaaaaaaah! features some dark and comically extreme sequences, but it’s not too aloof in its arthouse outlook. Plotwise, it’s essentially Romeo and Juliet.

• Continue reading at Chortle. Catch up on all of our Aaaaaaaah! news here.

Steve Oram’s entertaining drama imagines a world populated by vile beasts who look like humans but behave like apes

The directorial debut of Sightseers star Steve Oram is a singular item of monkey business that imagines a world populated by vile beasts who look like humans, but think, act and converse like apes. Shot for peanuts (or bananas) around decidedly trusting souls’ flats, the result often resembles an actors’ body-language workshop run amok, but between the territory-marking and leg-humping – funny on some primal level – a narrative and wounded psychology does evolve.

• Continue reading at The Guardian.

A final couple of Aaaaaaaah! reviews. See a selection of the recent opinion pieces on the film here.

• Little White Lies: Aaaaaaaah! Review: Actor Steve Oram has decided to make a movie, and the results are spectacularly disturbing… Let’s not mince words: Steve Oram is a master filmmaker. He’ll be known to British audiences for his co-starring role in Ben Wheatley’s 2012 comedy-horror hybrid, Sightseers, in which he played one half of an oddball twosome traversing the English countryside and who take a hatchet to the skull of anything or anyone that doesn’t chime with their quaint Midlands sensibilities. Aaaaaaaah! is his debut feature film as writer and director, a transgressive situationist comedy which is also one of the great British films of the new millennium. Explaining why is not going to be easy – Continue reading…

• Methods Unsound: Best of Film4 FrightFest 2015: Most Balls Out Insane Film: So let’s get to the heart of the matter, horror is often about extremes both visually and thematically, what was the most fucked up thing on offer? Aaaaaaaah! directed by Sightseer’s Steve Oram… The bluntness of the bestial activities throughout would be depraved and shocking in any other film but here they push up against human norms creating situations that are just hilariously surreal, such as Toyah Wilcox having a heart to heart with her daughter in grunts as she takes a shit on the kitchen floor – Continue reading…

• The List: List Film: Aaaaaaaah!: FrightFest 2015: Steve Oram and co literally go ape in a hilarious black comedy – Following the magnificently deranged, award-winning Sightseers was always going to be a challenge for its co-screenwriter and star Steve Oram. Undaunted, his directorial debut takes the transgression up a notch by replacing traditional dialogue with primitive grunts and shrieks, as it reduces humans to their base impulses – food, fighting, sex – while retaining the familiar trappings of modern society (lascivious cookery programmes, wild parties and ludicrous computer games) – Continue reading…

• Empty Screens: Review: Aaaaaaaah! (2015): The committed and skilled cast – including Toyah Willcox and Alice Lowe – embrace the material with panache, making Aaaaaaaah! a tasty but acquired treat that never outstays its welcome – Continue reading…

• Vodzilla: FrightFest film review: Aaaaaaaah!: The superb cast fully commit to the conceit, delivering brilliantly physical performances. Oram is particularly good as the aggressive alpha, swaggering and sneering up a storm, while Meeten is very funny as his craven companion. Honigman is equally good as Denise and has surprisingly strong chemistry with Oram, while Wilcox is a treat as the capricious Barabara – a flashback showing Ryan wooing her over a broken washing machine is one of several comic highlights – Continue reading…

• The Ooh Tray: Monkey Business: Note: An ape translation of this review is available – Were it not for an ingenious comic conceit, Steve Oram’s highly original comic melodrama would be a familiar story. A man splits from his wife, meets a woman at a party, trapped in an unhappy relationship, and the two decided to make a run for it and get married, returning to the home and kicking out the ineffectual boyfriend. But in Aaaaaaaah!‘s universe, human language and instinct haven’t evolved beyond that of primates, and consequently you have an eccentric and often brutally honest comedy that lays bare the base instincts and absurd animal behaviour that fundamentally characterises human relationships – Continue reading…

• Screen Relish: #F4FF15 FrightFest: Aaaaaaaah! Review: Aah, the precarious position of the alpha male. Oh should I say AAAAAAAAH!? Because that is the delightfully appropriate title of Steve Oram’s feature directorial debut. An absurd horror comedy, the film offers no dialog at all – just grunts, as humans, devolved into ape mentality, go about their poop-throwing, territory marking, television smashing daily existence. It’s the kind of overly clever premise you expect to wear thin, but honestly, it doesn’t. Much credit goes to a game cast (including Oram) that sells every minute of the ridiculousness, and to Oram again as director. He keeps the pace quick, his images a flurry of insanity you need to see more than once to fully appreciate – Continue reading…

• I’m With Geek: Aaaaaaaah! – Review: Written and directed by Steve Oram (the genius writer behind Sightseers), Aaaaaaaah! is a movie not to be missed. If you like a little strange in your life then this film is absolutely for you. Premiering at Film4 Frightfest last night, some are steal wrapping their heads around the weird and wondering movie. The struggle here, is giving Aaaaaaaah! the review it deserves… – Continue reading…

Dir/Scr. Steve Oram. UK, 2015, 79 mins.

In its enthusiasm for poo-flinging, food-fights, penis-chewing, cannibalism, tea-bagging and sudden stabbings, the film sets out to shock in a particularly cosy way

Inhabiting a waste ground somewhere between radical theatre and slob comedy, Steve Oram’s debut as a writer-director-star – following up his writer-actor work on Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers – is liable to corner a small but devoted cult following. It’s at least as interested in gross-out gags that out-gross the average Hollywood frat-boy film as it is in delivering a skewed yet pointed look at a suburban Britain where everyone communicates in grunts and gestures the way cavemen and women do in Hammer Fillms’ well-remembered prehistoric adventure films (One Million Years BC, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth).

AAAAAAAAH!’s specific precedents might include such one-offs as Richard Lester’s post-apocalyptic The Bed-Sitting Room, Akira Kurosawa’s rubbish-strewn Dodes’ka-den or Claude Faraldo’s Parisian troglodyte drama Themroc, but it’s fresh, distinctive and strange enough on its own and tight enough at 79 minutes not to outwear its welcome.

• Continue reading at Screen Daily.

• Cine Vue: Steve Oram’s directorial debut, Aaaaaaaah! (2015), comes on like a collaboration between Dogme ’95 and Chris Morris. It’s hard to think of another film closely like it in British cinema. It really is that out-there and singular. You can bet your bottom dollar on Aaaaaaaah! becoming a cult oddity in years to come, but it’s equally fair to say that the general cinema-going audience would be left nonplussed. It’s an experimental work for the arthouse crowd, certainly, but it’s also one of the funniest and most poignant movies of the year – Continue reading…

• Nerdly: Aaaaaaaah! is a film that defies easy categorisation, not to mention pronunciation. It is set in a fictionalised London that looks and operates much like the one we know – except all of its inhabitants communicate purely through animalistic grunting, whooping and mewling. Everyone understands each other (more or less) within the film but the audience is left to figure out the subtext through the actors’ onscreen actions, most of which are violent or hyper-masculine in nature – Continue reading…

• The Velvet Onion: One of the things that distinguishes the artists that we write about at The Velvet Onion is their ability to think differently and to make waves in a sea of entertainment mediocrity. At their best, they conjure up ideas and dream of worlds so creatively vibrant that they force us, the audience, into a different headspace ourselves. In this respect, Steve Oram‘s AAAAAAAAH! (always written with eight ‘A’s) totally nails it – Continue reading…

• Flickering Myth: Aaaaaaaah! is a bizarre choice for a directorial debut, but I can guarantee, hand on heart, you have never seen a film like this in your life. And more likely, you never will either. Due to its incredibly bonkers nature, Aaaaaaaah! is destined to become a cult classic in the same vein as Pink Flamingos, but it won’t appease anyone. It will be very interesting to see the reaction to the movie coming off the back of its debut at FrightFest, that’s for damn sure – Continue reading…

• Movie Ramblings: Once part of the psychopathic duo in Sightseers (Ben Wheatley, 2012), Steve Oram makes his directorial debut with the barmy concept that is AAAAAAAAH! Presented as “Romero and Juliet meets Planet of the Apes”, the bizarre narrative sees 80s queen Toyah Willcox star along side Boosh boys Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt, with Green Wing’s Julian Rhind-Tutt – Continue reading…

Human beings have the same violent tribal urges as wild apes in this surreal horror comedy, the directing debut of British actor and screenwriter Steve Oram.

An outlandish blend of wacko sci-fi horror and grotesque comedy, this low-budget British oddity will divide critics, but it should pick up a devoted following among fans of macabre, surreal, cheerfully disgusting cult cinema. The feature-directing debut of its writer and co-star Steve Oram, AAAAAAAAH! takes place in a contemporary London where humans behave like wild apes, speaking only in simian grunts as they masturbate, defecate, urinate, copulate and engage in deadly tribal rivalries. Vulgar and violent and intermittently hilarious, Oram’s uncompromising experiment in arty trash has its world premiere this weekend as part of Frightfest in London.

• Continue reading at The Hollywood Reporter.

A great review, of Toyah’s recent Acoustic, Up Close & Personal gig at The Hippodrome, London, by Clare Brotherwood at the UK Theatre Network.

She began acting at the age of 18… at the National Theatre! She has starred in the West End in Calamity Jane, in films such as Quadrophenia, and has worked with Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, George Cukor and Katharine Hepburn – who admired her bright red hair. This year alone she has made four new films.

But to a generation she is punk rock star Toyah Willcox, who made around 30 albums and won awards for best female singer with self penned hits such as Be Proud, Be Loud, Be Heard; Thunder in the Mountains; It’s a Mystery, and I Want To Be Free.

Last week she reprised these hits in the intimate surroundings of the performing space which is housed above the roulette tables of Leicester Square’s Hippodrome Casino – walking into the building was an experience in itself!

She’s also a TV presenter and only two days before I had been watching her looking for a house on the Thames. So down to earth and friendly did she appear that when the opportunity came up to see her perform live I jumped at the chance – and I’m so glad I did.

I don’t do music reviews. I know what I like but can’t tell you why, so I paid for my ticket and went along as an ordinary punter. But I was so blown away by this little powerhouse of talent that I felt I just had to let people know she is a must-see act.

• Continue reading at the UK Theatre Network. Check out where else you can catch Toyah’s Acoustic, Up Close & Personal tour at her Official Website.

Toyah Willcox, 5 Star and Jason Donovan at Flashback Festival: Review and pictures

It was the rain that dominated the second day of pop nostalgia at the 80’s Flashback Festival at Clumber Park, but whilst this packed crowd donned waterproofs and brollies, their enthusiasm for good 80’s music was not in any way dampened. The regular compere for the Saturday night slot, Clive Jackson, the Doctor from Doctor & The Medics was unfortunately unable to attend. Toyah Willcox took up the mantle and did a great job keeping the party going.

Soul II Soul hogged the sunshine and had the crowd on their feet with their hits including, Keep On Movin’ and Back To Life before handing the stage over to Toyah for her set. With a huge back catalogue of hits, she did not disappoint with old tracks such as Good Morning Universe and I Want To Be Free. Covers included a sterling performance of Guns ‘n’ Roses Sweet Child Of Mine, before finishing with It’s A Mystery.

• Continue reading/View Photo Gallery at the Nottingham Post. (Photos © Kevin Cooper/Nottingham Post)

The earnest 1979 TV series where Nigel Kneale’s Professor Bernard Quatermass bowed out

Urban streets are littered with bodies. Barricades constructed from cars are ablaze. The national broadcaster works behind security suitable for a prison camp, Fearful old people live communally in underground warrens. Gangs roam cities while in the countryside, the hippy like Planet People chant and wander, looking for sites from where they can ascend to salvation on another, mythical planet.

Professor Bernard Quatermass arrives in this chaos from his Scottish retirement retreat to take part in a TV show marking the moment when Russian and American space projects become one, linking with each other in orbit above the Earth. He sees the programme as a platform to help in the quest for his missing granddaughter, who he thinks has had her head turned by the Planet People. Over its four episodes, the 1979 TV series Quatermass portrayed a world gone to pot.

This important release, a two-disc set out on Blu-ray and DVD, collects the 1979 TV series and its spin-off film. Quatermass is played by a magnificently sideburned, yet often wooden, John Mills. As Quatermass‘s foil Kapp, Simon MacCorkindale overeggs the theatricals but is nonetheless robust. Watch out for Toyah Willcox amongst the Planet People.

• Continue reading at The Arts Desk. View further info on the recent Quatermass DVD/Blu-ray Box Set here.

It’s A Mystery is one of Toyah Willcox’s most well known tracks but from her ‘Up Close and Personal’ performance at Lowdham Village Hall it was no mystery that her career has been such a success, spanning 30 years. The Warthog Promotions event, part of Lowdham’s Book Festival 2015, featured Wilcox talking about her life and selection of acoustic performances.

Supported by Chris Wong and Colin Hinds on guitar, Willcox belted out numbers from across her career: Good Morning Universe: Be Proud, Be Loud, Be Heard; Jungles Of Jupiter; Echo Beach; and, Bird In Flight which was number one in the first ever Indie record chart. Diminutive and self-effacing off-stage, once in the limelight, bedecked in bright pink dress and silver bangles, the ‘rebel’ commanded the arena.

• Continue reading at the Nottingham Post.

Forever a member of the exclusive Mononymous Club, Toyah is perhaps best known to most today as a TV personality appearing on quiz shows and umpteen celebrity reality programmes.

To others she will always be remembered as the once wild woman of British mainstream pop who in the early Eighties broke the mould for female singers who previously only sang songs about unrequited love. Starring roles in iconic films Quadrophenia and Jubilee cemented Toyah’s reputation as being bold and rebellious further still.

Gigging consistently since the beginning of her career the interestingly titled latest tour, Songs From The Intergalactic Ranch House, named after her original fan club, is a retrospective celebration spanning the 1979 release of her debut album, Sheep Farming in Barnet through to her last solo studio album In The Court Of The Crimson Queen.

• Continue reading at the Bristol Post.

Toyah Willcox is one of those performers who seems to be in the public eye but these days is never quite as much in our faces in the way she used to be. Known more these days for TV appearances and her acting it’s easy to forget that she took that acting talent onto the music scene to establish herself as one of the most intense performers to have survived the 1970s UK punk scene.

Tonight she lived up to that reputation from the moment she came on stage exploding into the energy of All In A Rage, her voice still perfect, and making it plain that she was the star here and the focus. She took to the front with her band in darkness against the back line to emphasise her presence. The crowd was here to see her and she was not about to disappoint them.

• Continue reading at Birmingham Live.

A short, but glowing, four-star review of Toyah’s Acoustic, Up Close & Personal concert at Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham, by The Latest.

While everyone has been raving about Kate Bush’s recent gigs, another female singing national treasure, Toyah, has been on tour. Mixing her acoustic set with amusing anecdotes and asides from a pop and acting career spanning 37 years, Ms. Willcox proved more than capable of enrapturing a capacity crowd, with classic numbers like ‘I Want To Be Free’ and ‘It’s A Mystery’, alongside impressive cover versions of Guns ‘n’ Roses’ ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’ and Billy Idol’s ‘Rebel Yell’. “The Lisping Rebel” may look more middle England than hardcore punk these days, but she’s lost none of her impressive vocal range or zeal.

• Continue reading at The Latest. View their previous reviews of recent Toyah tours, and browse the remaining 2014 Acoustic, Up Close & Personal tour dates at toyahwillcox.com.

It is often said that small is beautiful and Toyah Willcox provided indisputable evidence.

In the court of the Crimson Queen, aka the Stroud Subscription Rooms, the diminutive, one-time punk princess demonstrated why after 35 years she still deservedly draws the crowds.

Opening appropriately with Good Morning, Universe, she cruised triumphantly through her greatest hits, strikingly revamped as a frothy acoustic set.

Instead of a full band, the entire performance was powered by accomplished guitarists Chris Wong from her current outfit The Humans, and Colin Hinds, formerly of China Crisis, thrashing out any number of solid chords and sizzling breaks.

• Continue reading at the Gloucestershire Echo.

A great review, of Toyah’s Crimson Queen/Greatest Hits…Live! gig at The Apex in Bury St Edmunds, by In Suffolk.

Toyah – In Suffolk Review

I expected a build-up, a fanfare, some dry ice at least. Suddenly, I blinked, and there she was : coming straight at me at 100 miles an hour.

There are some people who are just not quite of this world. All you can do is stand back and watch. Toyah leaps. Toyah dances. Toyah sings note perfect. Toyah doesn’t seem to even break into a sweat. Toyah does not stop for an hour and a half. In the middle ages you’d get burned for less.

Toyah doesn’t mean to intimidate me. She is warm and funny. She asks the audience if they “want to hear some 80′s rock and roll”. We all cry out: “YES!” Toyah dedicates It’s A Mystery to pensioner at the back of the hall. She tells self- depreciating stories about playing holiday camps and how her song Spectacular, that was intended for the 2012 Paralympics, ended up being used in Patsy Kensit’s Weight Watchers commercial. She laughs with us. She makes us feel she doesn’t want to be anywhere but here. Toyah is truly in the moment.

• Continue reading at In Suffolk. Browse all of Dreamscape news on the Crimson Queen tour here. View photos from The Apex and other dates at Dreamscape Gallery.

A review, by Darren Lock of ‘Prog Review’, of The Lady Or The Tiger. He says: And so I look at Fripp & Toyah’s first official collaboration (excluding them both appearing on the “Stranglers & Friends” live album).

A five star review, of Toyah’s gig at Concorde 2 last night, by Brighton & Hove’s The Latest.

What a night everyone had! Toyah Willcox is back with a vengeance in her new tour full of new and classic hits. She not only refined her singing voice so it had a beautiful rock-opera style to it, but also kept the staging and props simple, yet with scope to be dramatic.

• Continue reading at The Latest.