The Great Pretenders Gulbenkian Studio Theatre, Newcastle
THIS production is the British premiere of a 17th Century work by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega, but any assumptions we may have that it will be a genteel period piece are dispelled with the first few lines of dialogue.
Opening with a tirade of four letter abuse from Roman footsoldiers to their (absent) leaders, the translation by David Johnston (for The Gate Theatre) goes on to incorporate a great many deliberate anachronisms which give the play a decidedly modern flavour.
The first act accounts for only one third of the two-and-a-quarter-hour running time, and details the series of intrigues whereby Diocletian (John Straiton), a common legionary, ascends to the position of Caesar following the murder of his predecessor, Aurelius.
Having effectively established the background of decadence, savagery and corruption that was Rome in 300 AD, the play shifts gears after the interval for the arrival of a travelling theatre company which is to present an entertainment for the newly installed Emperor.
After a good deal of broad mockery of the group's thespian pretensions, there follows yet another change of tack as the troupe's hitherto self-absorbed leader, Genesius (Louis Hilyer), converts to Christianity and is martyred for denouncing the oppressive regime.
Groups of actors have often provided the focus of stories about the victimisation of innocents by totalitarian forces (examples include To Be or Not to Be, Privates on Parade, The Last Metro and the recent Spanish film Ay, Carmela!), so it's interesting to see such a relatively early variation on the theme as this.
But the affectionate satire of outrageously hammy theatricals, though amusing, strikes rather a hollow note when so much of the company's own work is stridently self-indulgent.
In particular, Jamie Newall's Aurelius would make Tod Slaughter seem a model of subtle understatement: his declamatory performance in Act I is barely distinguishable from the deliberate badness later on.
Hilyer (whose character is apparently the Patron Saint of actors) is, however, excellent, while Rae Smith's idiosyncratic costume designs and the lighting by Paul Russell also make very effective contributions to an uneven but often rewarding evening.
Musicon Concert, St Mary's College, Durham SIRITSU is a group of four young musicians devoted to the performance of music of Spanish and Bolivian origin, particularly that associated with the silver mining town of Potosi.
It was, perhaps, something of a disappointment to find that they were all from Britain and that, therefore, the genuine folk background was lacking.
Those who have heard Andean groups perform, as they have done locally in recent years, would miss their primitive and earthy flavour in this Saturday night performance.
Nevertheless, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening with some excellent musicianship displayed.
The music generally alternated between sophisticated 16th Century Spanish pieces mostly of a sacred character, with delightful singing from Sara Stowe and able accompaniments on recorders, harp, guitars and hurdy gurdy; and native material of Bolivian origin, albeit with Spanish conquistador influence evident.
Using genuine folk instruments such as armadillo charangos, pan pipes and caja and playing them splendidly, the group built their programme around the Bolivian seasons and the ritual divisions of the year.
They attempted to demonstrate how the Spanish influence was absorbed into the Andean vision of the world and they achieved considerable success.
The audience responded enthusiastically.
It was an unusual and intriguing evening.
Tommy Chase Quartet Arts Centre, Darlington IT'S BEEN three years since the Tommy Chase Quartet last played in Darlington and in that time the other players have changed completely.
Tommy is still obviously the leader and driving force, very much in the Art Blakey mould, and once again he's selected a group of talented young players.
For this tour the final line-up had Dave Lewis on saxes, Les Miller double bass, and guitarist Chris Watson who replaced the previously announced Hammond organist.
Darlington was only the second date on the tour and got off to a bad start with a trip from Manchester through freezing fog arriving late and cold.
Despite the slight delay the audience gave the band a rousing welcome and were rewarded with two superb sets.
It's hard driven, but Tommy is unmistakeably a jazz drummer, very crisp and energetic and clearly leading the group.
Dave and Chris indulged in a little showmanship but this was backed by some great playing.
Tenor sax and guitar played well together and in their many solos.
Dave also played the old fashioned curved soprano sax, which looks almost like a toy instrument but it sounded clear and forceful in his hands.
Most of the material was written by the band but it still sounded very much in the tradition.
Amongst many outstanding numbers was a tribute to Bobby Timmons based on Dis Here and a very bouncy Summertime.
The tour continues up and down the country and will be in Newcastle at the Corner House on Sunday (9).
They're definitely worth catching again.
A PLAN for a new concert venue could bring top cabaret stars to Darlington.
Provisional bookings have already been made for entertainers like Freddie Starr, Bob Monkhouse and Tammy Wynette to play the former Beehive Ballroom in McMullen Road.
If permission is granted for an entertainment licence, the promoters hope to start shows there within the next few months.
The developers, Beehive Variety Ltd, believe Darlington is well stocked with discos and night clubs for young people but there are not enough venues for the over-30s.
As well as staging concerts and cabaret the venue could also play host to conferences and banquets.
Beehive Variety Ltd has already spent 175,000 on improvements at the hall but Darlington council is still unhappy about safety arrangements.
A final decision whether to grant an entertainment licence will be taken in March.
A TOUR operator is battling to get thousands of pounds back after rock superstar Prince cancelled a concert.
Trevor Andrews, who runs the Darlington-based Rockbus concert travel and ticket business, is 3,700 out of pocket after Prince's show at Blenheim Palace was cancelled last August.
Now he is losing hope of getting anything back despite continued efforts, including faxing pleas to the star's Paisley Park base, in Minneapolis, USA.
Yesterday Trevor, a former science teacher at Staindrop Comprehensive, near Darlington, said: ' Because I want to keep good relations with my customers I decided to give full refunds to all 147 people who had tickets. '
Shortly after paying out, a decision was made to give individual ticket holders their money back or the choice of going to one of the Prince concerts due to be held this summer.
The concert promoter made no arrangements for agencies like Trevor's where refunds had already been paid.
He feels he has been punished for looking after his customers.
' Of course Prince has got some very nice publicity by saying people who had tickets for Blenheim Palace can go to one of his concerts this June. '
But when Trevor tried to contact the pop star's offices his appeals were in vain.
He has since sought help from Esther Rantzen's That's Life programme in an effort to get someone to accept responsibility for his losses.
He says several other tour operators have suffered the same fate.
' We are trying to run businesses which are crucial to the performers and the promoters.
It's very frustrating to be treated like this, ' he said.
No one was available to comment at the promoter's office yesterday.
ARTS organisations in the NorthEast shared 80,000 in grants last month.
Newcastle-based Northern Arts distributed the money during January to help 21 dance, music and theatre projects.
The biggest single grant of 7,000 went to David Massingham Dance towards a dance residency in Newcastle.
Sunderland-based Artists' Agency was awarded 2,000 while a project in Cleveland by artist Panayiotis Kalorkoti won 2,500.
And Darlington Centre for the Unemployed received 100.
A further 5,320 will be shared among eight craftsmen and women.
A DARLINGTON club has attracted some top acts following refurbishment.
The new-look Cockerton Band Club, Cockerton, has been completely refurbished and members say it is now one of the top venues in the area.
Acts lined up include the Raymond Froggart Band on February 22 and the Johnny McEvoy band on February 26.
Erotic scenes in ballet ' are outrageous'
Erotic scenes in a new version of Swan Lake coming to Darlington Civic Theatre are set to ruffle a few feathers, according to a top critic.
For Jeffery Taylor, arts correspondent for the Mail on Sunday claims the Northern Ballet Theatre has gone a touch too far.
At the weekend, after a day spent watching the company rehearse, the former professional ballet dancer described its performance as having ' more to do with the pelvic thrust than an arabesque '.
But his comments caused outrage at the Civic Theatre where the director, Mr Bryan Goddard, took the unprecedented step of taking out an advert to counter the claims.
In the announcement Christopher Gable, artistic director of the NBT, said he was astonished a rehearsal could be so misunderstood.
' I give my personal guarantee that this production of Swan Lake will be as magical for children as it is for adults, ' he wrote.
Mr Goddard said the Civic had taken many phone calls on Monday and Tuesday from parents worried the ballet would be unsuitable for their children.
' I was able to reassure most of them, but there was one lady who we could just not convince and she cancelled a group booking for 50. '
' We have already sold 87 per cent of our tickets so we think it should be a sell-out despite this article. '
Ms Anne Izza, press officer for NBT, said she had fielded about 300 calls as a result of the Mail on Sunday's article.
' We have had a major PR job on our hands with the schools.
But it's a classical version of Swan Lake that will offend no child and no woman, in fact nobody at all. '
' We had 22 teachers in here last week watching the same rehearsal because their children are doing a project on it and as a result of that we have had 260 kids watching the rehearsal this week.
' They don't find it in any way offensive, in fact they say it is beautifully done. '
Mr Taylor, who trained at the Royal Ballet School with Mr Gable at the age of 16, defended his report when he told the D &amp; S on Wednesday:
STRONG IMPACT
' Christopher Gable has no stronger supporter than me but his new scenario for Swan Lake is aimed to shock.
It says it aims to clarify the story a doubtful claim and to make a strong theatrical impact, which I am sure this production will do.
' It is going to cause the purist and the traditionalist to raise their hands in horror.
' They are not writhing around like a Soho sex show but it is outrageous compared to the traditional performance of Swan Lake. '
The Northern Ballet Theatre's Swan Lake has its world premiere at Leeds next Saturday.
It comes to the Civic Theatre in Darlington on March 31.
A SCULPTURE from the National Garden Festival is set to get a permanent home in a Durham City park.
Aion, created by sculptor Hamish Horsley out of Portland stone and slate, was one of the largest and most prestigious exhibits during the event at Gateshead in 1990.
It was commissioned by British Rail which has now offered it to Durham City Council on permanent loan as part of the improvements to Wharton Park which overlooks the main East Coast Railway line.
The council is proposing to site the statue which measures nine metres by five metres by two-and-a-half metres on Windy Hill, one of the highest points in the park, with the Cathedral forming a backdrop.
Director of technical services Ken Swales is recommending the city's amenities and leisure committee to accept the offer from BR and seek planning permission to erect the statue.
He said the statue was well received at the Garden Festival and had been wanted by many local authorities.
' Its donation by BR to the council would represent a major coup for the city, ' he said.
' The acquisition of such a high quality contemporary sculpture can only enhance the city's reputation as a centre for modern, as well as historic, artistic and cultural works.
' Additional landscaping will be provided to assist in the assimilation of the sculpture into its parkland setting. '
The committee will be told that the artist would be involved in moving and resiting the work which is being stored in Darlington.
It is expected this will cost the council 8,500 though this could be offset by a grant from Northern Arts.
The council hopes to unveil the sculpture in Environment Week in May.
Music meeting:
The Recorded Music Group is to change the usual venue of its meetings to Jason's Place at 7.30pm on February 14.
Cockfield Craft dates:
Cockfield Community Association is holding a craft fair and table top sale twice a month starting on Sunday.
They will be held in the community hall from 10am to 4pm every second and fourth Sunday.
Admission is free and anyone who would like to reserve a table should call.
Old-time concert:
The East Layton Singers are to give an old-time music hall concert to raise funds for Great Stainton church.
The concert is to be at Bishopton Village Hall on Saturday March 21.
Heighington 70s disco:
A 70s disco is being held at the Village Hall on Friday between 8pm and midnight to raise money for the playgroup.
Melsonby Concert party:
The Green Howards will be giving a concert at St James Church, Melsonby tonight.
The performance begins at 7.30pm and tickets are 3, including wine and savories.
20 years ago THE Monty Python team made the move from small screen to big screen as And Now for Something Completely Different came to Darlington Odeon.
The ironic thing about the film was that it wasn't different at all just a rehash of the best TV sketches.
Meanwhile, back on the box, coverage of the 11th Winter Olympic Games was getting under way in Sapporo, Japan, with Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy billed as' the greatest skier in the world ' among the commentators.
Killy had been triple gold medallist four years previously at Grenoble.
BBC1 screened Good Morning Yesterday, first seen on BBC2 and the origin of the series The View from Daniel Pike.
Roddy McMillan played the same Glasgow private eye but was called Daniel Britt on this occasion.
The name was changed in the series to avoid confusion with another BBC drama programme Brett.
15 years ago LONG before Jason Donovan or Philip Scofield donned the garment, ever-young Jess Conrad was starring in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat at Sunderland Empire.
If you stayed at home, there was an annoying clash on BBC1 and BBC2 as two new series overlapped.
Former Z-Cars and Softly Softly star Frank Windsor starred in and as Headmaster, written by John Challen and featuring characters he created for an earlier Play for Today slot.
Windsor played the long-time head of a boys' secondary school swallowed up by a grammar school to form a comprehensive.
Over on BBC2 was The Deadly Game, the full-length feature film prelude to the series Serpico.
That was based on the film starring Al Pacino, itself based on the true story of a New York cop who made allegations of corruption in the city's police department.
David Birney took over the role in the TV series.
10 years ago BBC1's Last of the Summer Wine was going strong as Foggy and Clegg decided the time had come to replace Compo's well-worn trousers.
At a secondhand shop they bought him a pair of rather tight jeans and also acquired a metal detector, opening up a whole range of possibilities.
The Tyne Tees Television weekly current affairs programme Briefing reported on the desperate shortage of long-term foster parents throughout the North-East.
In Horizon Lewis Thomas, one of the America's foremost biologists, explored nature in Notes of a Biology Watcher.
BBC1's fly-on-the-wall documentary Police followed the boys in blue over nine months inside the Thames Valley Constabulary.
Training recruits was the subject of this week's episode.
Sticks and stones
TWO academics, who clearly did not do much of their research in the North-East, have written a book called Bad Language.
Among their little exercises in search of conclusions was that which involved asking 55 schoolchildren to list expressions meaning stupid person.
At the top of this list is wally, which perhaps illustrates that the research was not conducted yesterday but the day before the day before then.
Dickhead, prat, idiot, thicko, cabbage and square are all prominent.
Not so predictable are flid, pranny, Rodney, remmy, dappy and Sydney.
Come to think of it you could call anyone by a name which is not their own and make them sound stupid.
You could, for instance, to select a name at random, call somebody a Kevin and be seen to be especially rude.
Or hurl the epithet John at them.
Or, for the purposes of balance, label somebody a right Osvaldo.
None of these appear on the inexhaustive list published by Lars Gunnar Andersson and Peter Trudgill.
And while nerd, goon, clot and spongecake are all there, there is no room, not a jot for phrases bandied about every night in North-East pubs.
These include mansheed, crackerjack, headbanger and doolally to name but four before the conversation really turns nasty.
Theatre time:
In Through the Out Door, a performance by the Mockbeggar Theatre Company, takes place at Trimdon Colliery Community Centre on February 28 at 7pm.
The company employs disabled actors and directors.
Tickets cost 1 and for further details contact Amanda Ward-Baker on.
African night:
The Bhundu Boys play Darlington Arts Centre on February 25 at 8pm.
Tickets cost 6 and further details are available on Darlington.
Today
BRAFFERTON:
Modern sequence and old time dancing, Village Hall, 8pm.
New dance taught 7.308pm.
DARLINGTON:
Durham rock band The Force, Docs Orders, Yarm Road, 8pm. 1.50 on the door.
Vintage Toy and Train Collectors' Fair, Ballroom, Arts Centre, Darlington, 10am.
TRIMDON GRANGE:
The Complete Graham Russell Show, rock/pop guitarist, The Dovecot, 8pm.
Coming Up
TOMORROW:
Dolphin Sunday Dance Club, Dolphin Centre, Darlington, 7.30pm.
Sacrament Meeting 10C11am, Sunday School 11.30am-12.15pm, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Cypress Close, Blackwell,
MONDAY:
Tea dance, Arts Centre, Darlington, 1.30C4pm.
Aerobics Class, Longfield School, Longfield Road, Darlington, 7C8pm.
Admission 1.
Grieg Trio
Darlington Arts Centre
DARLINGTON Music Society has had some superb and famous musicians and ensembles play at their concerts over the years, yet the young Grieg Trio from Norway must rank among the very best.
Their Saturday evening concert at the Arts Centre showed them to be individual artists of the highest quality who together produced something greater than just the sum of the parts.
This quality was at its most sublime in Schubert's marvellous E Flat Trio with which they ended.
In it they brought just the right weight of balance to each part, to each phrase, to each note.
Its effect was a magical transparency of texture yet with depth and solidity where needed.
With this class of playing the listener is led to a conviction that at last there may be in due time successors to the distinguished Beaux Arts Trio indeed, in their approach and enjoyment of the music they play there are parallels.
Earlier a trio by their fellow countryman Valen, Opus 5 in E Flat, seemed to derive much from Schoenbergian romanticism: intense and impassioned yet it lacked a variety of pace.
Marvellously played, the work might well yield more on a second hearing.
An andante con oto by Greig was brief, rich hued and warm while Haydn's Trio No 27 allowed Verbjorn Anaik, the Trio's pianist, to sparkle with a mercurial brilliance.
Dave Robson La Ronde Gulbenkian Studio Theatre, Newcastle ARTHUR Schnitzler's Reigen is perhaps best known under its French title and as the first of two film versions, made by Max Ophuls in 1950, is remembered as the quintessence of Viennese elegance.
Yet both original film and play were widely unavailable until the early Eighties, due to copyright problems and the author's insistence (after a public outcry had kept the play, completed in 1897, off the Austrian stage until 1921) that it not be produced for fear of his intentions being betrayed.
Accused in its time of being a scandalous affront to bourgeois morality, La Ronde in fact pinpoints its hypocrisy most acutely and in retrospect reveals its author as (among other things) a perceptively premature feminist.
Its plot is a ' circle of love ', as a succession of couplings begins with a nocturnal encounter between a whore and a soldier, and continues as the soldier has sex with a housemaid, the maid with her young master, the master with a married woman, and so on until we reach a count who returns us to the whore.
Each of the ten matings (the lights black out at the crucial moments, of course) is a vignette illustrating the transience of human relationships and the inequality which exists between uncommitted sexual partners, as passion, love, lust and power are unevenly distributed, invariably resulting in unhappiness.
A more obvious underlying meaning, pointed out by the programme notes, is to see the ' round-dance ' as a metaphor for the transmission of VD or, more topically, AIDS; but this seems to me less interesting than the social satire whose delicate emotional nuances (preserved in co-director Ceri Sherlock's modernised adaptation) give the play its wider significance and melancholy humour.
Victoria Scarborough and Colin Watson, taking five roles apiece, prove adept at giving every character a distinctive individuality while subtly stressing the continuities which make each the mirror image of one another's frailties.
Though it lacks the grace and fluidity of Ophuls' film (laborious set-changing is necessary between each scene), the production is stylishly designed by Birte Meyer and Idit Nathan, whose simple backdrops prove as attractive and versatile as the talented young performers.
Sheldon Hall Catherine Wheel, Smashing Pumpkins Riverside, Newcastle WITH two well-received EPs behind them, Catherine Wheel are one of the bands of the moment.
When this tour was announced I wondered why Catherine Wheel weren't taking the top spot on this bill considering their higher media profile.
After witnessing the gig I 'm definitely wondering why whey weren't taking the top spot.
With a full venue in front of them, Catherine Wheel started to produce sparks as soon as they went on stage with a determination to take Leo Fender's finest to their limits.
The band have a live intensity that's missing on their recordings and gave added depth to Let Me Down.
Vocalist Rob gave little away in the title department but if the tracks were from the forthcoming Ferment album then we're in for a treat.
The audience appeared to be loving every minute Smashing Pumpkins were shambling away on stage.
I've seen bands play better soundchecks and it didn't take long for self (and a few others) to head for home.
I didn't think anything could be worse than Teenage Fanclub's shambolic gig at Newcastle Poly but I was wrong.
SWAN Lake with a strippogram, erotic love scenes and a roller skating bear.
Not one for the purists, they said... others labelled it soft porn.
Before it had even hit the stage, the controversial production of Swan Lake by Northern Ballet Theatre had become steeped in controversy.
A top critic, Jeffrey Taylor of The Mail on Sunday, saw rehearsals of the ballet, and said it contained erotic love scenes.
' Swan Lake has more to do with pelvic thrust than an arabesque, ' he wrote.
Suddenly, the controversy was snowballing.
There was outrage everywhere.
There were a few cancelled bookings for children and Darlington Conservative councillor Peter Jones went on Radio Four last week, calling for it be banned from the Civic, where it is due on March 31.
Coun Jones had been urging Darlington councillors to stop the production coming to the town saying: ' If the borough council can ban something like the Chippendales, then it should have no hesitation of stopping a soft porn version of Swan Lake. '
But those who saw Saturday's world premiere in Leeds including Princess Margaret were left wondering what all the fuss had been about.
The princess, patron of the Northern Ballet, told stars of the company's production they had been brave to go for a modern version of the Tchaikovsky classic.
She was clearly supported by the sell-out audience at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, who gave a five minute standing ovation at the end of the two-hour performance.
After taking their bows the cast met Princess Margaret backstage.
Choreographer Dennis Wayne declared: ' Princess Margaret said we were brave and that the production had come off.
She seemed to enjoy it.
' I have no regrets.
The problem with ballet is it alienates people because it is culture.
But it is not, it is entertainment and it is for the people. '
The performance does almost as much to acrobatics, comedy and theatre as it does to ballet but that is not to say the dancers don't use their technical expertise to the full.
Lynne Connor, of Leeds, came with her two children, ten and 13 year olds Joanna and Jenny.
After reading reports about the ballet, she was worried.
' But I came down to the theatre and was assured it was suitable for children so we came with open minds, ' she said.
' It was fantastic.
The children have both been coming to ballet since they were three and they have loved it. '
Mary Ingham, also from Leeds, said she had booked to see Swan Lake expecting a traditional production.
' I did not realise it was a new production but I 'm very impressed. '
Margo Hawes, of Horsforth, said she had been coming to the ballet for years.
' I 'm either very naive or there is nothing to take exception to at all. '
The performance took the audience from gasps of fear as dancers were thrown up in the air, to laughter as a roller skating bear entertained.
' I did not expect the humour but I liked it, ' said Alma Cox, of Leeds.
' The acrobatics were marvellous.
The whole ballet is really good. '
Earlier Northern Ballet spokeswoman Anna Izza insisted that the production was not an attempt to shock.
' There is an exotic dancer who you could say, in modern terms, is a strippogram but it is actually set in 1870s Russia so she is an exotic dancer.
' She does not take off all her clothing as some people have been led to believe. '
Ms Izza said the love scenes were ' quite sensuous and in some parts possibly erotic, if your scale of erotic goes that low, but nothing that is overtly sexual. '
Northern Ballet director Christopher Gable said: ' I am not trying to shock.
I believe that if you are honest in the theatre the audience will be there. '
Artur Pizarro:
Richmond Georgian Theatre THIS weekend has provided music lovers within 20 miles of Darlington with some superb international music making.
In Darlington on Saturday there was the brilliant young Greig Trio from Norway.
From Czechoslovakia on Sunday Teesside heard the renowned Janacek String Quartet and in Richmond the Portuguese Leeds Piano Competition winner Artur Pizarro.
The latter's Richmond subscription concerts recital in the Georgian Theatre opened with Liszt's large scale B Minor Sonata.
This immense work requires from the performer a breadth of vision and sense of construction to unify its disparate parts together with a consummate technique.
All these were present in Artur Pizarro's performance.
Control over the full range from thunderous chords to glittering passage work to a mere whisper of a pianissimo was total.
This was a performance to remember, one of seamless continuity of musical thought.
Nor was there any flamboyant gestures from the pianist, just a stillness and controlled technique that let the music speak for itself throughout the evening.
The Seven Poetic Waltzes by Granados were marvellously poised and contrasted with the same composer's extrovert Concert Allegro that succeeded them.
Turina's Three Fantasy Dances are brilliantly imaginative impressions of Spain creating in Pizarro's hands, a magnificent finale to an evening of enthralling pianism.
THE outcry over a new version of the world's most popular ballet has been branded ' a storm in a teacup '.
And Coun Dot Long, chairwoman of Darlington Council's recreation committee, has revealed she is looking forward to seeing the controversial production of Swan Lake at the Civic Theatre.
The show came under attack before it even opened because one critic said it contained erotic love scenes, a roller skating comic and a simulated sex act.
Darlington Tory councillor Peter Jones spoke on Radio Four last week calling for the production to be banned from the Civic, where it is due on March 31.
But yesterday Coun Long said: ' It seems to be a storm in a teacup.
No one else seems to have the same criticism.
' People are now saying it's a most dramatic and exciting new production and it seems people who criticise it are totally discredited.
' I got tickets for it about a month ago and I 'm thoroughly looking forward to seeing it. '
AN ART exhibition on lesbianism has created been condemned by a councillor as' filth '.
The photographic display, due to open in Darlington next month, examines the way in which lesbians have been represented in film, fiction and erotica.
Outraged Tory Peter Jones has called on fellow borough councillors to ban on the exhibition which is set to go on display at the town's Arts Centre.
He has labelled it ' a cheap freakshow which could corrupt our young children who use the centre '.
Organisers said the display by Cambridge Darkroom, entitled Stolen Glances was' amusing ' but admitted that some people may consider the subject matter unsuitable for young children.
But Coun Jones said: ' The council must be out of its mind sanctioning something like this.
' Impressionable teenagers use the Arts Centre all the time and I don't want to see them confronted by this sort of filth.
Darlington should tell the organisers that we don't want this exhibition. '
Coun Dorothy Long, head of the authority's recreation committee, said: ' I don't believe in censorship of the arts.
' Instead, we should keep out of things and allow the experts to get on with running The Arts Centre.
This council isn't in the habit of banning anything and certainly not a photographic exhibition. '
The exhibition is due to open on Friday, March 13 and run until Saturday, April 25.
AN art exhibition on lesbians, due to open at Darlington's Arts Centre has been condemned by an outraged Tory councillor.
The photographic display called Stolen Glances examines the way in which lesbians have been represented in film, fiction and erotica.
But Peter Jones has called on his borough colleagues to ban it.
He has labelled the display ' a cheap freakshow which could corrupt our children '.
Organisers said the display was amusing but warned that some people might consider it unsuitable for young children.
MILITARY musicians put would-be bandsmen through their paces at a Darlington school yesterday.
Members of the band of the 2nd Tank Regiment, based in Catterick, were joined by the 16/5 Queen's Royal Lancers, from Saffron Walden, Essex, to stage a special workshop for pupils at the town's Haughton comprehensive.
Youngsters from 14C17 got an exclusive insight into the repertoire of a military band as players demonstrated everything from trumpet fanfares to dance music.
Today
HARROGATE:
Harrogate &amp; District Naturalists' Society Juniors, A Tropical Trip to Roundhay, meet at the Granby Hotel, 9.30am-12.30pm.
Details, tel.
.
Harrogate Croquet Club welcomes beginners, visitors and players, Queen Ethelburga's playing fields, Penny Pot Lane, 2pm.
Sun also 2pm.
Details, tel..
Every Sat/Sun.
Harrogate Group of Yorkshire Archaeological Society Meeting, The Dig at Knaresborough, Masonic Hall, Station Avenue, 2.30pm.
The Fell &amp; Dale Club 10 mile ramble, meet outside Library, 9.15am.
Coming up
TOMORROW:
Fleamarket and Collectors Fair, Easingwold School, York Road A19, Easingwold, 10am-4pm.
Details, tel.
. Harrogate International Concerts presented by Harrogate International Festival, Andrei Gavrilov Piano, Ravel Gaspard de la nuit, Prokofiev Sonata No 8 in B flat Op84, Schubert 4 Impromptus, Royal Baths Assembly Rooms, Crescent Road, Harrogate, 8pm.
Ticket details, tel.
. Ripon Ramblers' Association 10 miles of ridge walking on Cracoe Moor, meet in car park behind Morrison's store, Ripon, 9.30am.
Today
BARNARD CASTLE:
Barnard Castle Group of the Ramblers, 8 mile ramble of paths, bus to Winston and return walk to Barnard Castle beside the River Tees, meet at the Post Office, 1pm.
Details, tel.
Mike Collier, tel..
EVENWOOD:
Bingo and disco night, WMC, Manor Street, 7.30pm.
FROSTERLEY:
Cottage Crafts, Old Church Hall, 1.30C4.30pm.
Details, tel..
Coming Up
TOMORROW:
Bingo and 50/50 dance night, WMC, Manor Street, Evenwood, 7.30pm.
Cabaret night at the Commercial, Guitarist and vocalist Graham Russell, every Sunday, Misty Blue Inn, Spennymoor, 12noon-3pm.
Families welcome.
MONDAY:
Aerobics, Spectrum Leisure Complex, Hunwick Lane, Willington, 7.30C8.30pm.
Details, tel..
TUESDAY:
Bingo and 50/50 dance night, WMC, Manor Street, Evenwood, 7.30pm.
Cottage Crafts, Old Church Hall, Frosterley, 1.30C4.30pm.
Badminton Club, Spectrum Leisure Complex, Hunwick Lane, Willington, 7C9pm.
Details, tel..
WEDNESDAY:
Barnard Castle Group of The Ramblers, Slide Show Beautiful Corners of Britain by Sid and Joyce Lowes, also Contrasting Islands by Joan and Ian Martin, Trinity Methodist Hall, Barnard Castle, 7.30pm.
Admission 1 including coffee.
Everybody welcome.
Crook &amp; District Dog Training Club, Church Hall, Market Place, Crook, 6C8.30pm.
Details, tel.
Mrs Hall.
Modern sequence dance night, WMC, Manor Street, Evenwood, 8.30pm.
Cottage Crafts, Old Church Hall, Frosterley, 1.30C4.30pm.
Live Blues Night, different bands each week, Misty Blue Inn, Spennymoor, 8C11pm.
Kiddies Klub, Spectrum Leisure Complex, Hunwick Lane, Willington, 12noon-3pm.
Details, tel..
ART lovers have been left scratching their heads over a bizarre exhibition of kissing toothbrushes and dancing ties in Darlington.
Lancastrian Peter Ellis has spent 12 months at the town's Arts Centre working with everyday objects and fashioning them into works of art for his Funny Energy exhibition.
Some critics have labelled such shows a huge con but, according to Arts Centre spokeswoman Alison Lister, the display has received a warm welcome in Darlington.
She said: ' I can honestly say Pete's work is one of the best received exhibitions we have ever staged.
Some visitors have been surprised but none have criticised even if they don't think kinetic sculptures are real art. '
Mr Ellis created his strange works of art on site.
When the exhibition finishes on March 7 several items will be sent to a prestigious London venue.
Others will be put into storage.
It is humour circa 1943 and entitled
A Tour Around the Old Pubs and Hotels of Darlington: ' I came to Bank Top Station on the finest Locomotive the Caledonian had in stock.
I went to the Market in the Central part of the town and saw Harry Dolphin of the Forge Tavern on Albert Hill, one of the old Cricketers I used to play with at Darlington Cricket Club.
He introduced me to one of the Curriers in the Golden Cock.
We peeped through the Hole in the Wall to see the Queen's Head.
She was seated on the Woolpack which was tied like a saddle to her Grey Horse.
She was riding around town looking for George on his Bay Horse to hear of his encounter with the Dragon.
Later we found them chatting over a game of Alma in the Railway Tavern.
To celebrate the arrival of two notables in town, I approached the mayor, well known for his Butchers Arms, and asked him to send a joint off the Old Dun Cow or even a Bulls Head.
I did Hope that Lord Nelson who was staying at Raby might come down to partake of the fayre which had been set out on a Royal Oak table decorated with a huge Wheatsheaf, Blue Bells and a small Green Tree that looked very much like Three Tuns.
We felt we could Anchor there all day and drink and sing Britannia until the Turks went mad.
We ate like hungry Travellers, but the meat was tough and needed someone with Masons Arms to cut it.
I threw mine to the Greyhounds.
The queen became angry.
She cried: ' My heart Burns to think that the mayor could stoop so low as to try Robin or Fleece-ing us like this. '
Roaring like a Red Lion she started throwing Boots and Shoes out of the window.
She smashed the Globe.
Her eyes were like Glittering Stars; her raging voice could be heard all over the County  even as far as Cleveland.
I was told later that many North Eastern residents were disturbed by her noise.
It had become a real Waterloo: Alexandre collapsed into a Builders Arms!
So I decided to leave.
The Rising Star and Half Moon began to shine as I wended my way back over the Skerne Bridge.
I looked into the water and saw a Black Swan from the Park.
I was beginning to Cleaver for another drink in the Railway Hotel before returning home.
I met a friend who said he would drive me in his Rise Carr.
But he had an appointment with a delegate of the Slaters union at the Freemasons lodge in the Imperial, but I persuaded him to come for a drink.
He Drovers in his Model T to the Brown Trout where we finished the day off with a fine bottle of five-star Devonport brandy. '
Can you do any better?
Echo Memories will offer 25 to the best 1992 version of a Tour Around the Pubs and Hotels of Darlington.
For every pub mentioned that is still standing you get one point; for every pub long since gone two points.
And of course there will be extra marks for ' artistic merit '.
Keep your stories to a maximum of 500 words.
Send them by Friday February 28 to Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Features Dept, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF.
THIS monument is in memory of Septimus Hird, the 17-year-old who designed the Fothergill Fountain featured here last week.
The monument stands on the first cross-roads in front of the Carmel Road entrance to West Cemetery.
Septimus, who lived in the Green Tree Inn, Skinnergate, did not live to see his design leave the drawing board for in 1862 he drowned while swimming off Redcar.
His mother Ann was buried in Paris.
The fountain erected in memory of Dr John Fothergill, founding member of the Darlington Temperance Society was moved from Bondgate to South Park in 1875.
Today's unusual picture, a hand coloured postcard, shows the fountain in its original, Victorian position in the park.
The postcard has been kindly lent by Bygones of McMullen Road, Darlington (), which sells old prints of this area for 6 unframed or 16 framed.
ALL of the leading Temps who gathered to witness the Earl of Carlisle opening their Institute in Gladstone Street on September 23 1903 were captured by a cameraman.
Numerous Peases, Backhouses and Mounseys were there and the young man with the slicked back hair in the front row is Sir Charles Starmer.
On the left end of the back row is his bearded friend, Edward ' Teacakes' Laws whose brother, Thomas, is to the left in front of him.
Edward's son Robert, who has loaned this picture, remembers that drinking, smoking and gambling in his father's house were all taboo.
Edward, who died in 1932 aged 64, preached against the evils of drink in Darlington market place, and Thomas emigrated to Canada to continue the work, only to collapse and die in a pulpit at the end of a sermon.
The Laws family ran a bakery in Northgate hence the nickname Teacakes.
Robert's grandfather, Thomas, created the marvellous cake pictured here to celebrate George V's coronation in 1911.
Reflected Glory:
Darlington Civic Theatre NERVOUS giggles in a darkened theatre.
Whispered voices urging the giggler to be quiet.
A door on stage opens to reveal a figure, but not the one the surprise party-throwers are expecting.
His name is Manx but this is successful restaurateur Alfred Manx, not his playwright brother Michael Manx.
So opens Ronald Harwood's new play, which received its world premiere at the Civic last night at the start of a tour that will take it into London's West End.
Like last week's visit of The Miser with Tom Courtenay, Reflected Glory offers the chance to see Finney, one of the leading actors of the Sixties British film renaissance, in the flesh.
Unlike Courtenay, Finney is not yet wearing his character like a glove and as this was the very first public performance perhaps we shouldn't be expecting him too.
Rare is the production these days that lets critics in without the benefit of at least half a dozen previews.
Harwood's tale of brotherly love too, by its nature, changes into a different gear in its second half after an opening act in which the Manx brothers' we have not been on speakies for ten years' look poised for a reconciliation.
Alfred (Finney) and Michael (Stephen Moore) haven't spoken since the former took the latter to court over a play called Family Matters which exposed the skeletons in the Manx cupboard.
' Michael tells the world the family secrets in the name of art, ' is how his brother sees it.
Now Michael has written a new stage play Brother Mine which, as the title suggests, tells of two brothers named Nicky and Freddie whose resemblance to the real thing, as we see as the piece is acted out for Alfred's approval in the second act.
Michael looks on his new play as a celebration.
Alfred views it as crucifixion.
Harwood has things to say not just about families and brothers, not missing the chance to poke sly fun at the ' lovey ' behaviour of actors and the nature of playwrighting itself.
As Alfred tells Michael when he pleads Brother Mine is an act of confession and conciliation: ' If you want to cleanse yourself go have a bath and don't use me as your bar of soap '.
All this (the play not the soap) is wrapped up with a fair degree of barbed wit with Finney acting big and bold as Alfred, with Stephen Moore more cagey and devious as Michael.
Nobody else gets much of a look in.
A solicitor (Stephen Grief), an agent (Katherine O'Toole) and a wife (Holly Wilson) are only adequately sketched in.
It's left to Nicky Henson (who also does a mean pirate impersonation) and Mark Tandy to have their moments as the unlucky actors attempting to portray the fictional brothers in the stage play.
The production runs until Saturday.
AN AFRICAN band as old as their country perform at Darlington Arts Centre tonight.
The Bhundu Boys from Zimbabwe began playing together in celebration of their country's independence 11 years ago.
They took their name from the bush guerillas who fought with Robert Mugabe during the bloody war of independence and blend high energy guitar with subtle Zimbabwean rhythms.
Rise Kagona, founder of the group, said the birth of Zimbabwe acted as the floodgate to inspiration for the band.
' When you have been oppressed and let free you are like a bird out of a cage.
You celebrate and wander around and see what you have been missing, ' he said.
The band, forced to play covers of Beatles songs and American country music (the staple diet of Rhodesian radio), immediately switched to traditional African songs written specifically about celebrating freedom and living together in a new country.
' A lot of African music was outlawed in Rhodesia.
The only way you would get on television was to play songs in English, ' said Kagona.
' But a lot of African people could not understand English. '
Their popularity soon grew and the introduction of World Music to the West during the late 1980s catapulted the band to international recognition.
Shabini, recorded in Zimbabwe in 1987, shot to the top of the indie charts in Britain and the Bhundu Boys began to gather momentum.
' People are still coming to see Zimbabwe, and it is the same with us we used to see England as this tiny blob on the map and now we can see it for ourselves, ' said Kagona.
The band are one of the few African groups to maintain any kind of success outside their own country, due largely to the efforts of their manager.
' There are many good bands in Africa; they all want to come abroad but it is difficult to get visas and many promoters are only interested in doing just one tour.
' We have been successful because our manager has really wanted to explore with us and work together. '
The Bhundu Boys have recently played a few dates in Spain and have toured in Australia, America and Europe.
With the sad death of their bass player David Mankaba behind them, the band are promoting their third LP, Absolute Jit, and hope their colourful music can bring a ray of sunshine to Darlington.
Today
EVENWOOD:
Bingo &amp; disco night, WMC, Manor Street, 7.30pm.
FROSTERLEY:
Cottage Crafts, The Old Church Hall, 1.30C4.30pm.
Details, tel Mrs Hartshorne.
Coming Up
TOMORROW:
Barnard Castle Ramblers, nine miles of paths, Meeting of the Waters, Dairy Bridge, Mortham Towers, Whorlton and return.
Meet at Post Office, Barnard Castle, 10am.
Leader Alf Mitchell, tel.
Bingo and 50/50 dance night, WMC, Manor Street, Evenwood, 7.30pm.
Cottage Crafts, The Old Church Hall, Frosterley, 1.30C4.30pm.
Cabaret Night at The Commercial, Shildon.
Guitarist and vocalist Graham Russell, every Wednesday, Misty Blue Inn, Spennymoor, noon-3pm.
Families welcome.
MONDAY:
The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, open Mon-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun 2C4pm.
Tea dance, Leisure Centre, Spennymoor, 1.30pm.
Aerobics, Spectrum Leisure Complex, Hunwick Lane, Willington, 7.30C8.30pm.
TUESDAY:
Bingo and 50/50 dance night, WMC, Manor Street, Evenwood, 7.30pm.
Cottage Crafts, The Old Church Hall, Frosterley, 1.30C4.30pm.
Rotaract Club of Spennymoor, offers an active social life and many community, charitable activities to young adults aged between 18 and 30, Hillingdon Pub, Clyde Terrace, Spennymoor, 8pm.
Contact Garry on.
Dance Club, Spectrum Leisure Complex, Hunwick Lane, Willington, 5C7pm.
WEDNESDAY:
Morris Dancing in the Border Style, Witham Hall, Barnard Castle, 8C10pm.
Crook Writers' Club, Crook Town Cricket Club, Dawson Street, Crook, 7.45pm.
Crook and District Dog Training Club, Church Hall, Market Place, Crook, 6C8.30pm.
Details, tel Mrs Hall.
Modern sequence dance night, WMC, Manor Street, Evenwood, 8.30pm.
Cottage Crafts, The Old Church Hall, Frosterley, 1.30C4.30pm.
Lives Blues night, different bands, Misty Blue Inn, Spennymoor, 8C11pm.
Circuit Training, Spectrum Leisure Complex, Hunwick Lane, Willington, 79pm.
Small art:
Harrogate's Harlow Carr Botanical Gardens offers a course on bonsai gardening today.
Details can be obtained from the Northern Horticultural Society offices on.
Today
HARROGATE:
Harrogate Chamber Orchestra, Lounge Hall, Royal Baths Assembly Rooms, Crescent Road, 8pm.
Coming up
TOMORROW:
The Fell &amp; Dale Club ramble of 10 miles, meet outside Library, Harrogate, 9.15am.
MONDAY:
Harrogate Film Society presents' Romuald et Juliette ', Harrogate, for membership and guest ticket details, tel. Pat Eccles on.
Volunteer Stroke Scheme Club, Harlow Over 60's Club, Harlow Avenue, Harrogate, 1.45C3.45pm.
Every Monday.
Harrogate Bridge Club welcomes visitors to Duplicate Bridge sessions, 27 Robert Street, Harrogate, 7.15pm.
Tel. for a partner.
Every Mon/Thurs/Frid.
Lindon Singers, group who gives concerts for charity, rehearsal night, 14 Beech Road, Oatlands, Harrogate.
New voices always welcome.
Details, tel.
. Every Monday.
Scottish Dancing, Strathspey &amp; Reel Club, St Lukes Hall behind the old church on Kings Road, Harrogate, 8C10pm.
Every Monday.
Ripon Dog Training Society Meeting, Hugh Ripley Hall, Skellbank, Ripon, 7pm.
Every Monday.
TUESDAY:
Exhibition of flower and plant studies by artist and printmaker Tom Wanless, until Sunday 29th March, Mercer Art Gallery, Swan Road, Harrogate, 10am-5pm Tues-Sat, 2C5pm Sun.
Closed Mondays.
Admission free.
The Connaught Over 50's Club, Trades Hall, Westmoreland Street, Harrogate, 11.30am-3.30pm.
Men &amp; women welcome.
Entrance 25p.
Every Tuesday.
Aerobics for beginners, St John Fisher High School Gym, Hookstone Drive, Harrogate, 7.30C8.30pm.
Details, tel.
. Every Tuesday.
Knaresborough Spiritualist Society, service with clairvoyance and healing, Knaresborough House, High Street, Knaresborough, 7.15pm.
Every Tuesday.
Knaresborough Men's Forum, Assembly Rooms, Knaresborough House, Knaresborough, 10.15am.
Every Tuesday.
The Bhundu Boys:
Darlington Arts Centre BHUNDU Boys fever swept through the arts centre on Friday night like a bush fire out of control.
Just two songs into the two-part set and two-thirds of the audience were up and dancing.
Jivers young and old wiggled their bodies to the irresistible African rhythms.
With a simple set-up of two guitars, keyboards, bass and drums, the Bhundu Boys recreated a slice of Zimbabwean sunshine for the sell-out crowd.
Stepping out into the chill Darlington air after the show was more of a culture shock than a temperature change.
As one of the few African bands to make a lasting impression on the shores of the UK, the Bhundu Boys have built up a strong following.
Their jit jive music keeps the listener moving as it blends high energy, finger-picking good guitar melodies with deep African rhythms and percussion.
Songs about freedom, relationship breakdown and poverty were performed in a relaxed, almost innocent style that contrasted dramatically with the audience's whooping and prancing.
Even after 11 years, the Bhundu Boys look surprised by their popularity.
And after two sets of about 45 minutes each, it was hard to let the Zimbabweans go.
Hopefully, it will not be long before they return.
Incidently, fine African sounds were played by the disco crew, Ritual Sound System, before and between sets.
Also, full marks to the spontaneous half-time entertainment of gymnastics provided by the children in the audience.
A NATIONAL arts development agency, which was based in the North-East, has collapsed with debts of 30,000.
The Arts Development Association organised conferences and courses throughout the country from its headquarters in Darlington.
The board of management, led by Newcastle man Dermott Killip, organised a variety of programmes in a bid to stimulate interest in the arts.
But the agency ran into trouble when sponsorship funds became increasingly difficult to attract and management were forced to call in the liquidators earlier this month.
The association, which operated from Darlington Arts Centre in Vane Terrace, has debts of almost 30,000.
Liquidator John Taylor said: ' This association fell victim to the lack of sponsorship partly as a result of the present economic situation.
' When the company reached the point where it couldn't meet its liabilities I was called in to wind the business up. '
Mr Taylor said the agency had a particularly close working relationship with several local authorities throughout the country.
The Arts Development Association was formed in April 1990 to promote and develop the arts.
As well as organising conferences and courses the group also helped set up a national awards scheme and backed a number of arts publications.
TOP folk musicians will be heading for Darlington next month.
The Arts Centre is hosting a four day folk festival from Thursday March 19 to Sunday March 22.
Music fans will be able to take part in special workshops, sessions, dance displays and singarounds.
Professional and amateur artists have all agreed to lend a hand in a bid to make this year's festival the seventh one of the best yet.
Alison Lister, the Arts Centre's publicity officer, said: ' The festival is a celebration in grand style of the rich folk tradition in this area. '
Among the performers who will be appearing in this year's Spring Thing are 18-year-old Lynn Tocker, the Hokum Hotshots, Beggars Velvet and Whippersnapper.
Individual concerts and ceilidhs can be booked in advance.
Season tickets, giving entry to all the events, are also available for 13.
Further information from the Arts Centre on.
CLOSED-CIRCUIT cameras could soon be set up in the Darlington Arts Centre in a bid to stop vandalism.
A report to Thursday's recreation committee says art works in the Myles Meehan Gallery have been damaged over the past months to the tune of over 3,500.
Council officers say the vandalism meant the present exhibition Funny Energy had to be open for restricted hours only.
And it would be impossible to provide constant vigilance at future exhibitions.
Estimates have now been obtained to install a closed circuit television system.
When Durham Theatre Company's Stephen Rawsthorne asked Steve Chambers if he was interested in adapting D.H.Lawrence's Women In Love, the playwright had to stop and think.
' I was alarmed by the risk.
It's like: ' Well, you've done a lot of hill walking, how do you fancy hang gliding? '
I'd not done an adaptation before and my fears grew with the first reading of the book, simply because of the enormity of the task. '
Rawsthorne had clear reasons for wanting to tackle Women In Love.
The four main characters come from a mining community, but they've left it behind.
He saw a parallel with Durham's situation, where mining is being taken away, but it still dominates.
Lawrence's themes are universal, however.
Chambers sums them up as: ' how to live your life in the 20th century and remain sane and happy '.
As he explored the territory of the book, he was drawn into it more and more: ' Lawrence came from where I come from.
He was a sickly child with a bad chest; so was I. He was brought up by women; so was I.
His preoccupations seemed to be ones that I understand.
I am very interested in the history of my own family; in the kinds of people they became and why.
Finding out about my history was finding out about Lawrence's context and vice versa.
All of that is very exciting. '
Although not something he had thought of himself, the adaptation grew in importance to him, the more he worked on it.
' In fact, it's been one of the most exciting things that I've worked on and it's certainly changed my career. '
He means this in a number of ways, but most importantly in the very practical sense of the range of opportunities open to him.
' First I was pigeon-holed as a youth writer, then as a writer of comedies for adults.
Now I 'm someone who knows all about Lawrence and Lawrence is Art. '
He's currently developing a play about Lawrence's experiences in the First World War and he's been asked to look at Lawrence's novel Kangaroo, by the BBC.
' It's like you get on to a list, ' he suggests with a smile.
' I really enjoy Lawrence's questions.
I don't necessarily agree with his solutions, but his philosophical concerns are relentlessly modern: the problem of sexual love; the problem of sexual relationships; and all of it enfolded by the problems of industry and the environment.
' To Lawrence, the world is intrinsically a beautiful place, yet we will turn it into filth to get a smaller and less beautiful object out of it. '
The play opens with two nights at the Arts Centre, Darlington, on Wednesday 26 and Thursday 27 February before touring the Northern region, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire.
It returns to finish the tour at Darlington on Saturday 28 March, after which Stephen Rawsthorne will be leaving Durham Theatre Company.
IT was not without a frisson of excitement that Ridley Scott's Oscar nomination was greeted in the NorthEast.
This was not necessarily as great as the frisson of excitement which comes from watching his jolly exciting films but it should not be disregarded for all that.
Scott, from South Shields, is one of the five men nominated for the Best Director Oscar for his gripping work Thelma and Louise, a violent female buddy buddy movie labelled waggishly as Bitch Cassidy.
He is the only person in this year's list from the North-East of England.
This was not one of life's big surprises and actually it set one to wondering if he might be the first ever since the whole shameless, glittering, addictive business began back in 1927.
He is not.
With some help from film buff Tony Hillman it can be revealed that Scott has been preceded by Charles Laughton, Flora Robson and Anthony Havelock-Allen.
Laughton came from Scarborough and while his best known film role was probably The Hunchback of Notre Dame he won his Oscar in 1932C33 for The Private Life of Henry VIII.
He was also nominated for Witness For The Prosecution some 25 years later.
Dame Flora was from South Shields, like Ridders, and was nominated unsuccessfully for supporting actress in Saratoga Trunk in 1946.
Anne Baxter won for The Razor's Edge.
Anthony Havelock-Allen is from Darlington and collaborated with David Lean on some his great films.
Both Brief Encounter and Great Expectations which A H-A produced, were nominated for Best Picture.
The latter which he co-wrote was also on the Screenplay shortlist.
Thus, if Ridders, who went to school in Tynemouth and Stockton, wins next month (against the odds) he will join a select band of one.
For some reason (probably ignorance of the comic art) Will Hay, the majestic Thirties comedian who also went to school in Stockton was overlooked by the Academy.
WHY would Darlington Civic Theatre want the internationally-acclaimed English Shakespeare Company to bring its Macbeth to the town?
You might think it would be for the prestige, the culture or simply because enough people are interested that all three performances are sold out.
But the real reason the bar takings.
And if there are no bar takings then there will be no future performances.
While we appreciate that art must go hand in hand with commerce, we wonder how many theatre goers realise just how much depends on their half-time gin and tonic and choc-bar.
DROPPING your aitches is something of a crime if My Fair Lady is anything to go by, and the game that her fair ladyship the Queen was playing in last week's Echo Memories had indeed committed that crime.
The plea for information about alma had hundreds of people scurrying for their dictionaries, where they soon realised that the game in question did in fact go under the name of halma.
To start at the very beginning, as Pamela Hine did, the game or sport of halma was part of the ancient Greek pentathlon.
It was a long jump competition where the athletes did themselves no favours at all by carrying weights.
The Greek word for jump is halma and, as any linguist extraordinaire will know, the French have the word hallesthai meaning to leap.
And so to more modern times.
In the 1880s halma was rejuvenated as a board game Waddington's-style for two to four players.
There were 256 squares on the board and each player had 19 or 13 pieces.
The object was to get your pieces from your corner to an opponent's corner by leaping over his pieces.
A bit like chess played diagonally, said one correspondent, or ' a four-sided game of draughts, ' said John Mortimer.
' With four players you could have quite a battle in the middle of the board. '
John Lowe remembers halma as a forerunner to bingo.
Circular discs with numbers on were pulled from a bag, the numbers shouted out and when your card was full you leaped to the top of the house.
The game was, he says, illegal because it was a form of gambling.
But Mr Lowe agrees with Joe Corrie who remembers playing halma of whatever description in the Twenties.
Since then it seems to have died out.
NOT only does the woman in the new Spennymoor town centre sculpture look like she's sitting on the toilet, and the greyhound look like a ferret or a sausage, someone said but when they went to erect the blessed thing last week it didn't fit the space available.
Local stonemason John Willetts had to be called in that's another bill, he confirms, for Sedgefield District Council.
A PRODUCTION of Macbeth has run into ' hubble, bubble, toil and trouble ' over plans to run it without an interval in Darlington next week.
Civic Theatre director Brian Goddard says the internationally acclaimed English Shakespeare Company will have to make up the money for lost bar, ice cream and coffee sales.
He has accused them of ' artistic arrogance ' by refusing to have a break in the two-and-a-half hour performance.
ESC founders Michael Bogdanov and Michael Pennington director and star of the Shakespeare tragedy say they would rather stay away from the Civic, one of the strongest dates on their world tours, than face the same problem again.
' This is the first time anywhere in the world this has happened.
Not having an interval isn't a problem in Korea or Japan, ' said a spokesperson.
' Future English Shakespeare Company visits to Darlington are being jeopardised because bar takings are down. '
The interval row has been simmering since ESC informed Civic management two or three weeks ago that the production would be played non-stop.
Mr Goddard wrote back accusing Bogdanov, acclaimed as one of Europe's top theatre directors, of artistic arrogance and threatened the ESC would be unlikely to play Darlington again if an interval was not put in.
When Bogdanov refused, Mr Goddard said he intended to charge the company at least 1,650 to cover lost sales.
The ESC said yesterday: ' If it was a choice between 1,650 and not coming back, we would decide not to come back. '
Mr Goddard was equally adamant.
' We budget that we will take so much in sales during the interval and it's a significant amount of money to lose.
We have to consider the economic as well as the artistic aspect, ' he said.
He refuses to accept ESC's argument that Macbeth is usually played without an interval.
' As far as I am concerned there is no justification for not having an interval.
If they insist, we want our money. '
All three performances of Macbeth at the Civic are already sold out.
But there are tickets left for the ESC's other production Twelfth Night next week and that does have an interval.
DIRECTOR Stephen Rawsthorne and writer Steve Chambers had clear ideas what they didn't want to do in turning D.H.
Lawrence's novel Women in Love into a stage play.
What Rawsthorne calls' the Nicholas Nickleby model ' in which narration is part of the dialogue and exchange between stage and audience was out.
Rather he wanted to encompass the spirit and essence of the Lawrence book for a modern audience in a play in its own right.
He opted for Women in Love because of its mining background and the fact that the story focuses on four characters, a suitably economic cast for a small-scale touring company.
He also wanted to get away from having four actors to play 33 characters.
' I find that a bit stifling, ' he says.
' Great fun to watch but a logistics exercise '.
The play, which opened at Darlington Arts Centre last night, concentrates on the relationships between school's inspector Rupert Birkin, colliery owner Gerald Crich, teacher Ursula Brangwen and her artist sister Gudrun.
Visually the production contrasts the harshness of pit mechanisation with the softness of the sensuous clothing.
Which brings us to sex.
Rawsthorne points out that Lawrence is more about sexuality than specific acts of sex which account for only two or three sections of the 600-page novel.
He also disputes popular opinion that Lawrence badly treats women in his novels.
' We believe but maybe we would because we are men that he is as critical of the male sexual psyche as the female. '
As far as he knows Women in Love has not been adapted for the stage before, but already it is causing much interest from other theatres and companies.
Details of tour dates is available from Durham Theatre Company on.
Roll Call
ON the subject, dahlings, of Oscars as this space was yesterday there is yet more.
Ridley Scott, director of Thelma and Louise and nominee for this year's Best Director statuette, is, it was reported, following other illustrious North-East names.
Scott was born in South Shields and went to school in Tynemouth in Stockton.
Others with not dissimilar roots to have attracted the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which doles out the little gold men, include Charles Laughton (Scarborough), Anthony Havelock Allen (Darlington) and Flora Robson (South Shields).
This rather overlooked the biggest winner of them all.
He has not only been nominated, he was won five Oscars.
In 1966 he won for Born Free, in 1968 for Lion in Winter, in 1991 for Dances With Wolves to name but three.
He writes music, he is John Barry and he comes from York.
DARLINGTON music groups are to travel across the Channel to entertain German counterparts.
The acts Socios, a disabled musicians' support group; Tees Valley Jazzmen, a 21-year-old seven-member group; and Rooster Caruso; a four-piece rock and pop band were chosen by representatives of Mulheim, Darlington's twin town.
Darlington Council is considering a 300 grant to each group for the trip.
CHRISTOPHER Gable says he did not set out to deliberately shock.
Yet he was well aware that tampering with the traditional approach to Swan Lake would ruffle a few feathers.
What he wasn't expecting was a Sunday newspaper preview article claiming Northern Ballet Theatre's new staging of Swan Lake was steamy, erotic stuff with a hint of oral sex.
More dirty duck than sensual swan was the impression given.
The result of this advance publicity not wildly accurate as it turns out spelt potential disaster for NBT which prides itself on making its work more accessible to youngsters.
Worried parents fretted that their children would be exposed to X-rated happenings.
A Darlington councillor who, of course, hadn't seen the production called for it to be banned.
The threat of cancelled bookings hung in the air.
Backstage at Leeds Grand Theatre, a few days after Swan Lake's royal premiere elicited a five-minute standing ovation from the audience, Gable talks long and intelligently about the controversial production.
You'd expect the unhelpful advance publicity to make him wary of the Press.
Not at all.
He has operated an ' open door ' policy since taking over as NBT's artistic director and will continue to do so.
If people are going to have their opinions formed by what they read in the tabloids, he feels sorry for them.
A relatively simple question like ' Are you a happy man? ' (one assumes he must be in the wake of the successful opening) is followed by a 15 minute answer.
Gable replies that to be honest he's surprised, although not by the attitude of ' the old guard conservative group of three or four London reviewers'.
Their reaction was predictable: ' One expects them to groan, though I don't know quite why we should be seeing a piece as it was performed 50 years ago.
That's what they think ballet should be and that's why I think, by and large, ballet is a dying art form. '
What has surprised and pleased him is the public's response.
He wasn't sure how they'd take to this rethink of Swan Lake.
From the letters he's received and through talking to audiences, he knows the production is a popular one.
Just don't use the word ' crowd-pleaser '.
Gable regards this as an insult to the audience handed out by critics who consider themselves on a higher level.
That NBT audiences and critics are out of touch would seem to be borne out by the response to NBT's recent touring hit Romeo &amp; Juliet.
Worst production of the year, wrote one London critic.
Best of the year, voted readers of Dance and Dancers.
' I was not sure what the general public's reaction would be to Swan Lake.
Everyone knows the name and thinks they know the story.
I presumed they would be bringing very formed expectations to the theatre.
' What I've found is a far younger element in the audience.
On the evidence this production is speaking far more vividly to this generation than the traditional version. '
Gable hopes his Swan Lake will be viewed not as a version but a theatre event in its own right.
' Although I don't try to shock I do try to make the moment as vividly alive for the audience as I can and that's a sort of crusade, ' he admits.
He's moved the story to Russia, sent the Prince on army manoeuvres where he joins a boys' boozy night out, has the swans massacred by a power-mad crippled usurper and the corpses piled obscenely in a heap.
Worst of all, the swans don't wear tutus but rather fetching white corseted little skirts.
NBT audiences are ' not content to look at rows and rows of identical girls doing the same thing, ' he maintains.
Gable justifies his changes with talk of Tiananmen Square killings, the murder of the Russian royal family, Auschwitz, Hollywood parties and even Prince Andrew.
This may sound extreme in print but Gable considers it ' legitimate stuff of the theatre. '
He says: ' I simply tried to do what I observed in my career in the straight theatre with some of the finest directors, particularly Peter Brook.
' I tried to make the story as individual and as real as I can, and if possible to approach without any preconceptions, which is hard with Swan Lake because I have been associated with the ballet for 14 years.
' You can't just make a performance of everything you have seen.
You have to clear away the debris.
I did with this, looking at various segments of the story. '
He's proud that Romeo &amp; Juliet introduced children to both Shakespeare and Prokofiev ' in a way that makes them think it's not culture and a bit boring and I wish I could go and watch Neighbours. '
Christopher the Crusader is in his stride, the man who reckons this generation of youngsters is deprived.
They may have more toys, games and TVs per room than any other generation but lack the stimulation of reading, listening to music and the radio of Gable's youth.
' It seems to me that what our children have got is a little square box with predominantly soaps and games shows, with fingertip control to get them from one to another as they get bored.
There is no stimulus for the imagination and like any other muscle it can atrophy from lack of use. '
Gable is honest enough to acknowledge that there's some truth in the saying that no publicity is bad publicity: ' The cynical and worldly part of me tells me it's been wonderful because the production must be the most talked about in 20 years of dance.
' Once the production opened and the showed the allegations were totally groundless we are left with a production that parents know is suitable for children and no one can take that publicity away. '
 Swan Lake plays at Darlington Civic Theatre from March 31-April 4 and Newcastle Theatre Royal in June.
ONE hundred years ago theatre history was made in Bury St Edmonds.
The curtain went up on Charley's Aunt for the first time at the Theatre Royal.
Tomorrow former Blue Peter presenter Mark Curry will be bounding around the same stage in frock and wig as Lord Fancourt Babberley in the centenary staging of the Brandon Thomas farce.
This Mobil Touring Theatre production will later find its way to Darlington Civic and Newcastle Tyne Theatre on a four-month national tour.
Brandon Thomas opted to unveil his Aunt away from London fearful that the capital's theatre critics would tear it to pieces.
Out-of-town audiences were greatly amused.
So much so that a theatre fireman laughed so loud that he fell over, accidentally rang the firebell and brought the curtain down prematurely.
Despite that success, the playwright had difficulty raising the money to bring the comedy into the West End, although the backer who came up with the all-important 1,000 needed to clinch the deal was able to retire to a South Sea island on his share of the profits.
At one time Charley's Aunt was being performed in 48 different countries simultaneously.
But, as director Peter Wilson points out, a play demanding 10 actors, three sets and several costume changes is' too big to tour ' these days unless, of course, you have the backing of Mobil, who've spent 1m on its touring theatre since 1986.
Mark Curry is well aware he's following some illustrious predecessors in the role of Lord Fancourt, who dons a frock to impersonate a long-lost aunt from Brazil (where the nuts come from).
Jack Benny, Arthur Askey, John Mills, Tom Courtenay and Griff Rhys Jones are among those who have enjoyed petticoat power.
Curry, who began his career at seven presenting Yorkshire TV's Junior Showtime, admits: ' It's a daunting part because of what you hear about people who have played it before.
It's a great play and should be played for real.
The comic business comes out of the situations. '
Curry spent two years at Harrogate Theatre before being asked to present a Saturday morning TV show and later Blue Peter.
When he left that he did wonder if anyone would cast him in a straight play but was fortunate enough to get Billy Liar.
In the revival he's acting alongside a previous Charley's Aunt Patrick Cargill, the veteran actor best known for the ITV comedy series Father Dear Father.
He played Lord Fancourt at Windsor Rep for one week in 1952 but says: ' I can't remember one thing about it although I do have a photograph of me looking extremely young and lovely. '
Now he is playing solicitor Spettigue, whose niece and ward misbehave themselves by having an unchaperoned lunch at Oxford University with a couple of male students.
Cargill doesn't think the old-fashioned moral attitudes will deter a modern audience: ' One has to remember it's a costume play.
We are not pretending it's taking place today.
' A lot of it is charming because the way of speaking and attitudes of people in those days now becomes an amusing factor.
I think that's why the play has survived so long because it has this peculiar charm. '
The prospect of 16 weeks on tour doesn't especially fill Cargill with delight, so why do it?
' They pay me, ' he says, before qualifying his statement: ' I am doing it for the love of my art.
Of course, I love the theatre or I would not go on doing it. '
He recently spent two years in the musical Me and My Girl in London's West End and, after 53 years in the business, has no wish to retire.
' I 'm a workaholic, ' he says.
' I don't like my own company so I like to be in a show.
I can honestly say I can't remember a show I definitely didn't like doing, although I might have been in some that didn't turn out as I though they would. '
He prefers working in an old theatre with proscenium arch.
He prefers the separation it gives actors and audience.
' If theatre has any magic it's when that curtain comes down and there is that lovely separation, ' he says.
 Charley's Aunt plays Darlington Civic Theatre from March 9C14 and Newcastle Tyne Theatre from May 4C9.
Turning Points:
East German Art in Revolution, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Grange Terrace, Sunderland (until Mar 28); Reg Vardy Gallery, Sunderland Poly, Ryhope Road, Sunderland (until March 27).
AN exhibition full of proverbs and quotations and protests.
Maja Nagel rues the day when she had to leave a castle in the East for a cramped little studio in Berlin.
And Angela Hampel one of the GDR's leading feminists now realises that while men and women were more or less equal in an impoverished communist society, in the capitalist West the great divide looms ever wider.
It also seems to be a sad fact that the increase in freedom since Die Wende The Turning has brought with it an increase in monetary problems and the 26 artists here, all of them under 40, obviously have great, heart-searching problems to cope with.
Of the 15 artists who were involved in the 1984C85 Newcastle anthology of East German art, only Hubertus Giebe is included here.
Here he provides the powerful image of the striding male Anarchist in the entrance hall of the NCCA.
Anarchy on a smaller scale is provided by photographer Kurt Buchwald who set up a ' Photography Forbidden ' sign in front of innocuous subjects and then took photographs to see what happened.
The roughest police treatment he got, it seems, was in the West.
An eye-opening show.
Eleanor Bowen Deaths and Entrances, Polytechnic Gallery, Library Building, Sandyford Road, Newcastle (until March 13).
TAKING as her text one of Paul Cezanne's lesser-known dictums that ' the same subject, from a different angle, can be the subject for study of the most powerful interest ', Eleanor Bowen stretches the art of drawing to its limit.
The continuous return to the same subject to wring out every ounce of meaning from it, has long been regarded as the hallmark of the true professional.
But whereas Eleanor Bowen once used drawing as a means of recording for posterity what was immediately in front of her eyes, I am thinking in particular of those powerfully smudged charcoal drawings of the interior of Darlington Railway Station nowadays she goes far beyond this to evoke the feelings of considerable ill and unease.
Since this is also something of a retrospective exhibition we have the much earlier painting of her Rome Studio in 1976, where in a sequence of flat planes she explores every facet of light and the spaces between.
There is no gainsaying the fact that London-born Eleanor Bowen has come a long way since her last exhibition at the Durham Art Gallery some eight years ago.
Six Local Art Societies, Art Gallery in the Town Centre, Queensway, Billingham (until March 14) IT seems to me that the ink was barely dry on my last little piece which suggested that Darlington Society of Arts seemed content to restrict itself to one exhibition per year when, all of a sudden, came news that Darlington, the CAS and Hartlepool Art Club were to join forces respectively the Hambleton, Leven and Yarm art societies to put on a joint show of their work at Billingham.
All and sundry seem to be involved.
Inevitably certain names will already be familiar Stephen Crwother, Walter F Parker and Tom McAndrew from the Hartlepool club and the Jeans, Botwright and Carmichael together with John Garter and Glynn Porteous from Cleveland and Edna Downs and Gina Morton from Darlington itself.
Landscapes abound and there seems to be a particularly strong focus on equine subjects.
All in all, this is a most effective collaboration even if the innocent eyed Sunday painter W. Littlefair has to carry the burden of being the sole representative of the newly formed one-year-old Yarm Art Society which boasts 18 members on his shoulders.
The World of Dolls 1700C1900 and 1900C1970, Laing Art Gallery, Higham Place, Newcastle (until April 12).
THIS is a magnificent exhibition for anyone in their first, second or even third childhood.
For here are Paddington, Pooh, Rupert and the rest of the gang to help keep fresh the memory of American President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt.
There are dolls in costume here from virtually every country in the world.
Dolls, like everyone else, should have somewhere to live and here is a veritable estate of miniature houses.
Since this is a fun, letting-your-hair-down sort of show, there is also a trampoline, a rocking horse, a model, pedal-powered and car battery-operated train as well as rides on Muffin the Mule for which you need only a 5p token that can be purchased, by the bucketful downstairs.
SHOWING off their musical skills on Saturday, 40 talented young musicians will be playing in concerts that give a taste of the high grade work these youngsters can produce.
In the second-ever Players of Distinction concert held in Darlington, 20 younger aged children from the area are giving an afternoon concert and the older players perform at 7pm.
Organised by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music's honorary local representative Mrs Mavis Robson, the concerts give a platform to distinction holders in their exams, from elementary grades to more advanced levels.
The boys and girls will be playing the piano, string and woodwind instruments, cornet, euphonium and trombone, and three singers are performing.
The concerts are in Darlington Arts Centre Theatre at 3pm and 7pm, tomorrow.
Tickets are 2.50 at the door.
Women In Love:
Darlington Arts Centre PASSION, sex, violence and humour it's all there in the Durham Theatre Company's thought-provoking production of Women in Love.
Steve Chambers has done a superb adaptation of the D.H.
Lawrence book and given it a highly fluid feel.
Costumes, scene changes, music and lighting all blend together to give the feel of life in the early twentieth century.
Attention is paid to every detail particularly the stunning costumes.
Full marks to costume designer Catherine Dobson, who uses colours and style to reflect each character's personality.
Sisters Ursula and Gudrun, convincingly played by Tracey Wilkinson and Angela Lonsdale, are dressed in vivid shades of orange and blue to contrast their fiery and cool tempers.
Stewart Morritt, as Gerald, and Jack Randle, as Rupert, grappled well with their roles, both literally and metaphorically.
The famous wrestling scene was very well-choreographed and even funny.
But anyone expecting a bout a la Ken Russell would have been sorely disappointed.
These wrestlers kept their long johns on.
There was more writhing on the stage with some very powerful love scenes.
But the kissing and romping brought some embarrassed sniggers from the audience even though it was all done in the best possible taste.
The bodice-ripping production goes on tour tomorrow through the region.
Box office details on.
WITH a nod towards what he calls the column's ' unorthodox allegiance ', Tom Lynn has sent the front cover of The Gooner, the Arsenal fanzine.
Reproduced here, it's a taster for an edition campaigning against the Arsenal Bond scheme intended to fund redevelopment of the North Bank, that famous fun factory.
Implementing the Taylor report means that Arsenal (and West Ham, and Manchester United) are by no means alone in potentially putting football out of the ordinary fan's reach.
So tomorrow the Football Supporters Association, of which Sunderland television dealer Tom is an avid member, is organising a national protest day.
At 3pm all standing fans are urged to stage a minute's peaceful sit down; those already seated should stand up and (as it were) be counted.
Tom, who 'll be off his backside at Roker Park, is passionate.
All seated doesn't mean all safe, he says.
' Football fans are demanding the choice whether to sit or stand in safety and comfort.
' All seated stadia will put the game beyond many people and inevitably lead to a back door ban on away fans as capacities are drastically reduced. '
It's much the same attitude that meant Darlington fans at Torquay last Saturday had to pay 6 to stand behind the goal, a quid more than the home crowd.
The Gooner also carries an articulate open letter to David Dein, Arsenal's cultured vice-chairman.
It urges him to safeguard the Highbury tradition and not turn the stadium into a middle class mausoleum.
' The opera, ' adds The Gooner perceptively, ' it ai nt. '
Football Supporters Association membership details from PO Box 11, Liverpool L26 1XP.
Cracked it... and speaking of fanzines, gay supporters can now buy a publication (honest) called The Football Pink.
Probably a much better bet is Darlington's ' Mission Impossible, ' which in the new issue has fulsome praise for Northern Ventures Northern Gains the Northern League magazine with which we have some slight connection.
' Well produced and excellent value for money, it has the professional look you would expect from crack North-East journalist Mike Amos. '
Thanks.
MACBETH will play at Darlington Civic Theatre without an interval next week despite a theatre chief's protest 's.
Brian Goddard, the Civic director, accused the English Shakespeare Company of ' artistic arrogance ' for not having an interval in their two and a half hour sell-out production.
And he called on the company to make up the 1,650 for lost bar, ice-cream and coffee sales.
The ESC, however, threatened to stay away from the Civic in future if they had to make up the lost revenue.
Yesterday Coun Dot Long, chairman of the recreation committee, said the ESC's artistic integrity should take precedence over economic considerations.
' Mr Goddard has acted perfectly properly in his efforts to maximise the income of the Civic Theatre in the present difficult economic climate, ' she said.
' But he will be asked to accept the arguments put by the ESC and not insist on any extra payment. '
She said the council welcomed and valued the visit of such a prestigious company.
Mr Goddard said the ESC had apologised to the Civic for causing any inconvenience.
FORTY talented musicians from the North-East are to show off their skills in two concerts at Darlington Arts Centre.
The musicians from North Yorkshire and South Durham will be playing in concerts organised by Mavis Robson, the honorary local representative of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.
The performers all gained distinctions in the Associated Board's examinations during 1990.
The concerts at 3pm and 7pm on Saturday will mark the second event of its type to be held in Darlington.
A similar performance was given last year.
Among the instruments being played are the piano, the trombone, euphonium and recorders.
Tickets are available from the Arts Centre at 2.50 with 1.50 concessions from the Arts Centre or at the door.
ABOUT 40 talented musicians from the North-East are to show off their skills at two concerts at Darlington Arts Centre.
The musicians from Darlington, North Yorkshire and South Durham will be playing in concerts organised by Mavis Robson, the honorary local representative of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.
The performers all gained distinctions in the Associated Board's examinations during 1990.
The concerts at 3pm and 7pm tomorrow will mark the second event of its type to be held in Darlington.
A similar performance was given last year.
Among the instruments being played are the piano, the trombone, euphonium and recorders.
Tickets are available from the Arts Centre at 2.50 and 1.50 for concessions.
Trouble bubbles over Macbeth play
A drama which threatened to turn into a tragedy when artistic tempers flared appears to have been resolved.
The English Shakespeare Company's forthcoming performance of Macbeth at Darlington Civic Theatre looked set to fall victim to the play's ' unlucky ' reputation.
For when the company announced there would be no interval in the 2 7hour production and refused to change their minds, Mr Brian Goddard, theatre director, accused them of ' artistic arrogance '.
And as the squabble boiled over, the company threatened never to return if the theatre pressed for lost bar takings, estimated to be 1,650.
A spokeswoman for the ESC defended director Mr Michael Pennington's decision.
' It's a short play and its very hard to find a natural break in the action, unlike some of Shakespeare's other works.
' The action goes along at break-neck velocity to reach its conclusion and so there is no problem with the audience fidgeting. '
But on Thursday, the council's recreation committee ruled that Mr Goddard's claims for compensation should be shelved in the name of ' artistic integrity ' Coun. Mrs Dot Long, committee chairman, said: ' Mr Goddard has acted perfectly properly in his negotiations with the ESC in his efforts to maximise income for the Civic Theatre in the present difficult economic climate.
' On this occasion, the recreation committee considers the artistic integrity of the production should take precedence over economic considerations. '
In a statement, Mr Goddard said the ESC had apologised to the theatre for any inconvenience caused by not telling them earlier that the play would run without a break.
' The Civic Theatre and the ESC have agreed to wait until the end of the week's performances and then to evaluate the amount of income taken before any further discussions take place, ' he said.
' We wish to stress that our discussions are proceeding on amicable terms and there will be further visits to Darlington Civic Theatre. '
Mr Robert Smallwood, deputy director of the Stratford Shakespearean Centre, said academics had disputed the question of doing without an interval in the play for years.
' It really is a contentious area, ' he said.
' Some productions of Macbeth have one and others decide not to, which is artistically good but commercially dubious.
' The problem is that the structure of the play shows no sign of what Shakespeare intended at all. '
The play's three performances next week are sold out, though there are tickets left for their production of Twelfth Night which does have an interval.
Theatre fans complain of poor bar service and lack of leg room
Complaints about the bar service and leg room at Darlington Civic Theatre featured prominently in a questionnaire, councillors heard.
Mr Bryan Goddard, theatre director, said staff would keep looking for ways to improve the bar service, including encouraging people to order beforehand.
And applications for grants from arts funds had also been made.
He said the survey, which attracted 499 replies, had shown that some people experienced problems getting into Signor Pepi's Bar.
Complaints about the coffee bar had already been dealt with by adding shelves and tables near the Borough Road entrance.
Other patrons complained about the lack of leg room, especially in the dress circle and the front row of the upper circle.
He said he had written to everyone who had included an address, explaining that the problem in the dress circle was due to the original structure of the theatre.
If each row had been widened, one row would have had to have been removed, meaning the new front seats would have been higher than health and safety rules allowed.
This would have meant putting a safety rail across the front of the circle across the sightline of other members of the audience.
' We decided to go for restricted leg room rather than restricted vision, ' he said.
The report also showed that 320 of the 499 who replied had visited the theatre more than four times in the last year.
Coun. Dorothy Long, committee chairman, said the council would continue to look for ways to improve the bar facilities.
Generally the first year of the expanded Civic Theatre had been a great success.
FOUR musicians who began playing together at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1986 play at the next Darlington Music Society concert on March 14.
The McCapra String Quartet have just been reappointed Aldeburgh Quartet in Residence for the second year running.
The Darlington Arts Centre programme comprises Mozart's Quartet in B lfat K458 ' The Hunt '; Malcolm Arnold's Quartet No 2; and Beethoven's Quartet in F Op 135.
Tickets are 4.50 (OAPs 3.50, Under-21 3).
The concert begins at 7.30pm.
Live writing:
Leading novelist Liz North, author of Dames and Ancient Enemies, has been collaborating with GCSE and A-level English students at Harrogate College of Arts and Technology as part of the Live Writing scheme funded by Yorkshire and Humberside Arts.
Coming Up
TOMORROW:
Claro Marine Modellers give a free display of model and sail boats, Boating Pond, Valley Gardens, Harrogate, 10.30am.
MONDAY: Scottish Dancing, Strathspey and Reel Club, St Luke's Hall, Harrogate, 8pm.
British Horse Society Lecture.
Feeding for fitness and performance, Granby Hotel, Harrogate, 7.30pm.
Harrogate Bridge Club welcomes visitors to Duplicate Bridge sessions, 27 Robert Street, Harrogate, 7.15pm.
Tel for a partner.
Every Mon/Thurs/Frid.
Ripon Dog Training Society Meeting, Hugh Ripley Hall, Skellbank, Ripon, 7pm.
Every Monday.
Today
RICHMOND:
Richmond Branch of Royal Scottish Country Dancing Society coffee morning, Richmond Town Hall, 9am to noon.
GILLING WEST:
Village School jumble sale, Village Hall, 2pm.
HAWES:
Supper dance in aid of Hawes children's playground, Crown Hotel.
MIDDLETON TYAS:
Garage sale in aid of NSPCC, Foresters' Hall, 10.30am to 1pm.
NORTHALLERTON:
NCDS Sixties night, Revellers, Yafforth.
Belly dancing classes, every Saturday, Eau de Vie Health Club, Darlington Road, Richmond, 2C4pm.
Coming up
MONDAY:
National Council for Divorced and Separated, Town Football Club, Northallerton, 8pm.
Details.
TUESDAY:
Northallerton Mowbray Folk Dance Club, Grammar School, Northallerton, 7.30pm.
Every Tuesday.
Details.
Help Children's Society: Volunteers are needed for a Children's Society house to house collection in Catterick Village, near Richmond, in April.
Contact Sheila Crick on Richmond.
Today
BRAFFERTON:
Old time and modern sequence dancing, Village Hall, 7.30C10.30pm.
New dance taught 7.30C8pm.
DARLINGTON:
Barn Dance in St Andrew's Church Hall, Haughton-le-Skerne.
Tel Darlington (mornings) for details.
MIDDLETON TYAS:
Garage Sale in aid of NSPCC, Foresters' Hall, 10.30am to 1pm.
Coming Up
TOMORROW:
Dolphin Sunday Dance Club, Dolphin Centre, Darlington, 7.30C10.30pm.
Old and new members welcome.
Bridge WMC, Croft.
Old time and modern sequence dance classes for adult beginners, Community Centre, Hurworth, 7pm.
Details tel.
Today
SPENNYMOOR:
Jumble Sale, Town Hall, 10.30am.
FROSTERLEY:
Cottage Crafts, The Old Church Hall, 1.30C4.30pm.
Details, tel Mrs Hartshorne.
Coming Up Cabaret night at the Commercial, Shildon.
Bingo and 50/50 dance night, WMC, Manor Street, Evenwood, 7.30pm.
Cottage Crafts, The Old Church Hall, Frosterley, 1.30C4.30pm.
Guitarist and vocalist Graham Russell, every Wednesday, Misty Blue Inn, Spennymoor, 12noon-3pm.
Families welcome.
MONDAY:
The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, open Mon-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun 2C4pm.
Tea dance, Leisure Centre, Spennymoor, 1.30pm.
Aerobics, Spectrum Leisure Complex, Hunwick Lane, Willington, 7.30C8.30pm.
TUESDAY:
Bingo and 50/50 dance night, WMC, Manor Street, Evenwood, 7.30pm.
Cottage Crafts, The Old Church Hall, Frosterley, 1.30C4.30pm.
Rotaract Club of Spennymoor, offers an active social life and many community, charitable activities to young adults aged between 18 and 30, Hillingdon Pub, Clyde Terrace, Spennymoor, 8pm.
Contact Garry on.
Dance Club, Spectrum Leisure Complex, Hunwick Lane, Willington, 57pm.
WEDNESDAY:
Morris Dancing in the Border Style, Witham Hall, Barnard Castle, 8C10pm.
Crook Writers' Club, Crook Town Cricket Club, Dawson Street, Crook, 7.45pm.
Crook &amp; District Dog Training Club, Church Hall, Market Place, Crook, 68.30pm.
Details, tel Mrs Hall.
Modern sequence dance night, WMC, Manor Street, Evenwood, 8.30pm.
Cottage Crafts, The Old Church Hall, Frosterley, 1.30C4.30pm.
Live Blues night, different bands, Misty Blue Inn, Spennymoor, 8C11pm.
Circuit Training, Spectrum Leisure Complex, Hunwick Lane, Willington, 7C9pm.
Theatres closed:
Operating theatres were closed at Bishop Auckland Hospital at the weekend.
All emergency cases needing surgery were taken instead to Darlington Memorial Hospital.
A hospital spokesman said: ' The theatres were closed for Saturday and Sunday for routine maintenance and refurbishment. '
A MUSICIAN who wrote a unique series of music books for physically disabled people has found himself in their shoes after suffering a stroke.
David Biermann, 46, whose right side is now permanently damaged, was a tutor at Peterlee Grammar School for 15 years.
He wrote the books in 1985 to help people with physical disabilities enjoy electric keyboard music.
The book, Switched On, published in 1990, is now in its second edition having sold over 15,000 copies.
' The idea of my book was to encourage students to become more and more interested in music and composing by giving them first-hand experience of keyboards' he said.
Mr Biermann spent eight months convalescing after the stroke, staying with his mother, Anne Biermann, in Elton Road, Darlington, and running a music course at Williams music shop.
Last Friday he presented copies of his books to Darlington Borough Council.
He is also presenting books to Easington District Council and Durham County Council during his 10 day holiday from his home near Lake Constance, in Germany, where he is a music and language lecturer.
' I came back because I felt I owed it to County Durham, many of my ideas for the book were inspired here, ' he said.
PLATFORM-soled shoes are said to be coming back.
As one who wore them, briefly, first time round, I'd say then that so are sprained ankles, torn ligaments, crepe bandages and walking sticks.
High Scorers Concert:
Darlington Arts Centre THIS concert looks set to be come an annual event in Darlington's musical calendar.
The participants are those young people who have passed with high honours in the Associated Board of Music examinations during the preceding session.
On Saturday they were invited to play one of their examination pieces to an audience which consisted mostly of parents and friends, but with a sizable number of outsiders, well wishers all.
The acquisition of a new Steinway Grand piano by the town stimulated the idea of allowing its use by and for the younger generation.
The success of the project was evident at the first concert last year.
This year, gratifyingly, the number taking part had doubled, so that two sessions had to be held.
It was really a most heartwarming occasion.
The range of instruments represented violin, cello, double bass, flute, oboe, bassoon, recorder, trumpet, trombone, euphonium and of course, piano, plus an eloquent young singer lent an infinite variety to the programme.
The playing throughout was excellent, in some cases superb, and always moving.
Credit for the resounding success of this venture goes to Mrs Mavis Robson the local Associated Ward Secretary whose organisation was exemplary.
The future of music in Darlington has a promising glow.
Le Rue:
Redcar Bowl AFTER the standard blues fodder from support band Sinister Footwear, the style of cajun rock purveyed by Le Rue was well worth waiting for.
Despite the infectious music and Pierre Le Rue's exhortations to the audience to rise from their seats and come towards the stage, precious few did so.
That left plenty of room for those wanting to let themselves go.
Le Rue the band are one of the tightest and most cohesive units I've seen.
It would be hard to fault anything they did and although the unit bears the fiddle player's name, every member of the band was given his own chance to add a little something to the songs under Pierre's subtle method of musical direction.
Le Rue the man doesn't let his talents stop at the violin and vocal duties with the band as his guitar-playing proved.
The mixture between cajun, bluegrass and boogie styles was almost seamless and all gained from the five musicians' vigour and enthusiasm for the songs they were playing.
Pierre Le Rue may not have mega sales or an exceptionally large following behind him, but the combination of the band's musical ability and his stage presence made for a very enjoyable evening.
I wouldn't hesitate about going along to another of the band's gigs where, it is to be hoped, the audience would give more than a round of applause for the amount of hard work put into the show.
The Poppyfield
THE boys have got some new toys, courtesy of winning The Northern /Mardi Gras talent competition a while back, and they have twiddled every imaginable knob while re-recording two ' live favourites'.
But among the bare rhythm tracks are some truly uplifting tunes that, without stretching the realms of credibility too far, are worthy of comparison to New Order at their most ecstatic.
Untitled Composition No 1 now features some great vocal effects and an enormous electronic orchestra to emphasise the grand, symphonic melody.
Cities, despite its carefree chorus and gentle synth lines, suffers slightly from its lengthy technoish rewrite, but is still an excellent song.
SINGER Gemma Wilson from Newcastle has a lovely, easy voice, not unlike Debbie Harry's during the gentler moments of Parallel Lines.
However the presence of nearly rap-vocalist Ken Sakamoto from Tokyo will cause Hug to be compared to the Sugarcubes.
Whatever, Mesmerised is a really pretty, catchy perhaps even poppy, little tune.
The bside, Shatter Me, is slower, more intense, more Pixies-esque, and like the a-side is interspersed with inventive tape cut-ups.
The 12 inch carries two extra tracks.
Procession
THESE Hartlepool lads throw everything into this two-track demo, and end up sounding like early Eighties' pop combined with touches of Nineties' hardcore.
There is no doubt that they have some excellent musical ideas but at the moment their efforts are a little unfocussed.
Or perhaps it's just the mix.
Treading Water is a frantic track, powered by pumping bass and chinking rhythm guitar, whereas Harlequin, a possible single, opens with a slab of techno keyboards and ends up with a guitar solo.
The songs are good, and Procession are not afraid of immersing themselves totally in their music, but perhaps a more measured approach might be worthwhile.
No vigilantes in the ' Dales vigilantes ready for lorries' (Echo February 19) has the ring of high drama.
It also has rather unfortunate connotations of self-styled guerrilla activists prowling the Dales ready to plunge daggers into the tyres of quarry wagons at night or to fire catapults at drivers daring enough to run their gauntlet during daylight hours.
Of course, I would have few grounds for complaint had the words attributed to me been my own.
However, I must stress that the word ' vigilante ' in fact never passed my lips during the interview conducted by your reporter.
While I am happy that our efforts to keep more heavy traffic off the roads should achieve front page prominence, I am not so keen that so much journalistic ' topspin ' should have been applied in the process.
Meanwhile, while our association welcomes the six months stay of execution for the Redmire line (Echo, Feb 19) may we urge all those concerned about this issue that there is no room for complacency.
However, the extra time does enable us to maximise the effectiveness of our local support network... short of arming a band of rural guerrillas.
Stan Abbot, chairman, The Wensleydale Railway Association.
ELSIE CLOUGHTON, 74-year-old musician who plays piano and piano accordion at events throughout Darlington.
I've been playing the piano and the piano accordion for about 60 years.
I first started when I was seven and a half.
I suppose I was influenced by my father who used to sing and tell stories at concert parties he ran.
I was brought up in a different era where you had to entertain yourself.
If you had a talent, you were recognised, and often I got invited to play for the local Boy Scout group.
I still sing and play some of the material that my father used all those years ago.
They are particularly popular when I play in front of old people.
During my week, I play at a number of keep fit classes around Darlington.
I've been playing at the classes for around 40 years.
I was first asked to play the piano at a local youth centre by a lady called Gladys Mutimer.
It was her that invited me to play for a keep fit class.
I now play at classes in Mowden Junior School on a Monday evening and at Abbey Road Junior School on a Wednesday evening.
A class for the Over 60s at the Dolphin Centre in Darlington takes up my Tuesday afternoon, where I play the piano.
It's quite nice because the people at the classes come to hear the music as well as to keep fit.
Often they ask me for requests, and sometimes they will come over and ask about a piece of music I've just played.
At the classes I usually play light, modern and rhythmic music.
A lot of younger people enjoy music like 42nd Street, a new musical in my day, but, of course, it's still around today.
I don't just play tunes at keep fit classes.
I used to run an English and Scottish dancing class at the old high school in Cleveland Avenue, before it became Hummersknot School in 1955 where I worked for 22 years part-time, teaching dance.
One of the competitions pupils took part in was the Darlington Competitive Dance Festival.
The festival takes place once a year, usually in March.
At the festival, there are demonstrations of dance, such as Morris dancing and country dancing.
There are also demonstrations of different kinds of music.
I used to play for the Darlington Deanery Choir one afternoon a week.
We used to go along to various churches in the area playing music.
For about four years, I was involved in weekend courses at Rayhead and Lanton Castle Adult Education Centres and more recently at Beamish Hall.
At one course, I was playing for experts from the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London.
I used to go along to Greenbank Hospital's geriatric wards, where I sang and played to the old folk.
A friend of mine, Audrey Walker, used to come and involve the patients in some gentle exercises.
At the moment, I do quite a few barn dances, mainly for wedding anniversaries.
I try and provide a good selection of music, and sometimes do my own calling.
I don't play at as many events as I used to but I still enjoy playing my musical instruments and entertaining people.
WOULD you take to the stage at Darlington's Civic Theatre for half a sixpence?
Members of the town's Operatic Society are trying to find a tall, dark, handsome man who is willing to do just that.
The society has launched a search for an actor willing to take on the key role of Young Walsingham in their latest production.
But while Half A Sixpence has a budget of 35,000, the best any Young Walsingham can expect to received is three pence.
Secretary Bill Jones said: ' We are after someone about 6ft tall who is good looking and very well spoken.
It doesn't matter if he can't sing because Young Walsingham doesn't utter a note. '
As an added inducement, the society is offering the lucky winner a salary of half a sixpence.
Mr Jones explained: ' Although we pay professional musicians, choreographers, and a musical director none of the cast take a salary. '
Auditions are being held at Darlington Arts Centre, in Vane Terrace, tomorrow evening at 9.15pm.
Steve Bone's Jazz Providers:
Tap and Spile, Darlington WITH a growing number of pubs and clubs in Darlington opening their floors to locally-grown pop and rock music, it was time for jazz to get a peep in.
Steve Bone's Jazz Providers (' we provide jazz, ' explained Steve) play a modern kind of music, allowing their virtuoso talents free reign on old standards like Summertime, Girl From Ipanema, Water Melon Man and Sunny.
The four-piece ensemble (Keith Peberdy on bass; Alan Dodgson on guitar; Stuart Ellerton on drums and Bone himself on saxes) just turn-up and play no rehearsal beforehand which means their jazz is totally spontaneous.
They don't have a set style: sometimes a touch funky when plunked along by the bass; sometimes rather laid back and mellow when the languid guitar takes over.
And then, of course, there is Steve Bone blowing as many saxes as he can fit in his mouth at the same time.
He looks more relaxed now on stage than he did in his cheek-busting days in Head to Head, but can still make a sax cry when he wants.
The Providers are resident at the Tap alternate Tuesdays (next is March 17), at the Queen Catherine Hotel, Osmotherley, every other Sunday (next on Sunday) and soon at the Institute in Darlington.
A DARLINGTON theatre group was last night seeking a dream man handsome, six feet tall and with a posh accent.
Darlington Operatic Society yesterday staged auditions for a handsome blade to play Young Walsingham in its new production of Half A Sixpence.
The show will open at Darlington Civic Theatre on April 29 for a two week run, but so far the search for a Young Walsingham has been fruitless.
Publicity officer Elizabeth Cooper said the character does not have to sing or dance.
With a reward of five new pence (or twice times sixpence) at stake they should not expect to make their fortune either.
Today
BECKWITHSHAW:
Whist Drive, Village Hall, near Harrogate, 7.30pm.
HARROGATE:
Harrogate Croquet Club welcomes beginners, visitors and players, Queen Ethelburga's playing fields, Penny Pot Lane, 2pm.
Details.
Every Saturday.
Gardening Daycourse, Introduction to Pruning, Study Centre, Harlow Carr Botanical Gardens, Crag Lane, Harrogate, 10am-4pm.
RIPON:
Blair Dances, modern and sequence dancing, Hugh Ripley Hall, Skellbank, 7C11pm.
Details.
Every Saturday.
Coming up
SUNDAY:
Fell and Dale Club ramble of 10 miles, meet outside Library, Harrogate, 9.15am.
Museum of Mechanical Music, Peter Holt on the Compton Cinema Organ with entertainment from other mechanical organs in the museum's collection, Bradley Grange, Bradley Lane, Rufforth, York, 12.30 doors open.
Details.
Today
CHESTER LE STREET:
Weekly Saturday Tea Dance, Park View Community Association, Church Chare, 1.30C4pm.
Details, tel.
Fee 50p.
DURHAM:
Children's ballroom dancing classes and disco dancing classes, St John's Church Hall, Meadowfield, various times according to age and grade.
Details, tel /.
FRAMWELLGATE MOOR:
New College Light Opera Group presents A Viennese Evening, The Garland Theatre, New College.
Tickets, tel 584 4604.
GATESHEAD:
Hedgelaying Competition, go along and find out more about the traditional skill of hedgelaying with hand tools, Long Acre Wood, park at Lamesley Parish Church and walk up Smithy Lane and into Long Acre Wood near the Saw Mill, follow the marked route to the hedge, 1.30pm.
NEWCASTLE:
Star Fleet Command meeting, science fiction enthusiasts welcome, Central Library, Princess Square, 12.30C5pm.
Details about the group available on Darlington.
Children's Entertainment in Eldon Garden Shopping Centre, Percy Street, Newcastle, 2C4pm.
Every Saturday until 25th April.
Coming Up
TOMORROW:
Bay Folk Club, with guest Keith Kendrick, Bay Hotel, Cullercoats, 8pm.
Every Sunday.
John Girton at The Live Theatre, Quayside, Newcastle.
Details, tel.
South Tyne Jazz Club, with guests the Vernon Street Jazzmen, New Crown Hotel, Mowbray Road, South Shields, 8.30C11pm.
Any Questions?
Put your questions on current issues to a panel of four well-known women, Buddle Arts Centre, 258b Station Road, Wallsend, 7pm.
Details, tel.
Twelfth Night:
English Shakespeare Company, Darlington Civic Theatre A RATHER timid audience still shaken from the English Shakespeare Company's new version of Macbeth ventured along to the opening night of the old romantic favourite Twelfth Night, apprehensive at what was in store this time around.
But they were not disappointed.
The familiar Twelfth Night everyone knew and loved was just that along with a fine performance by the English Shakespeare Company.
Most outstanding of all was Jenny Quayle, as Viola, who searches for her long lost twin brother in Illyria.
Disguised as a page boy albeit an incredibly feminine one she enters the service of Orsino, with whom she falls in love.
But the path of true love never did run smooth and who could blame Orsino for overlooking this waif-life creature with the short, dark, cropped hair for the Countess Olivia, she of the long flowing hair and dresses.
Countess Olivia, who recently lost her brother and father, is now in deep mourning and has vowed to live like a recluse for seven years.
Allie Byrne gives an enjoyable performance as the cool countess who is attracted to Viola now known as Caesario.
The scenes with the two together are among the most passionate and amusing in Michael Pennington's production.
But Olivia's seriousness is in direct contrast to the meddlesome Maria (Tracey Mitchell), Olivia's waiting woman, who has as much fun as Olivia has soul-searching.
Manipulative Maria teams up with hell-raisers Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Feste, Olivia's jester, in a plot to humiliate Malvolio (Timothy Davies), a John Cleese-type character who would seem more suited to Faulty Towers than Darlington Civic Theatre.
Today
RICHMOND:
Mayor's Coffee Morning, Town Hall, 9am-12noon.
Richmondshire Ramblers nine mile Hamsterley walk, Nun's Close car park, Richmond, 9am.
Richmondshire Subscription Concerts presents Cantico Choral Ensemble, Georgian Theatre Royal, 7.30pm.
TUNSTALL:
50/50 auction, Village Hall, nr Richmond, 2pm.
Coming Up
TOMORROW:
Antiques and Collectors Fair, Village Hall, East Harsley, 10am-4.30pm.
Home made refreshments.
MONDAY:
National Council for the Divorced and Separated meetings every Monday, Town Football Club, Northallerton, 8pm.
Details, tel.
. Westfields Tennis Club annual meeting, Town Hall Hotel, Market Place, Richmond, 7.30pm.
Coming Up
TOMORROW:
Guitarist and vocalist Graham Russell, Misty Blue Inn, Spennymoor, 12noon.
MONDAY:
Tea dance, Leisure Centre, Spennymoor, 1.30C3.30pm. 50-plus session, Spectrum Leisure Complex, Hunwick Lane, Willington, 12noon-4pm.
Aerobics, Spectrum Leisure Complex, Hunwick Lane, Willington, 7.30C8.30pm.
TUESDAY:
Bingo and 50/50 dance night, WMC, Manor Street, Evenwood, 7.30pm.
Cottage Crafts, Old Church Hall, Frosterley, 1.30C4.30pm.
Details, tel Mrs Hartshorne on.
Junior Amateur Dramatic Society present their Annual Spring Entertainment, Town Hall, Spennymoor, 7pm.
Rotaract Club of Spennymoor, a club for young adults aged between 18 and 30, Hillingdon Pub, Clyde Terrace, Spennymoor, 8pm.
Contact Garry on.
Dance Club, Spectrum Leisure Complex, Hunwick Lane, Willington, 57pm.
Today
BRAFFERTON:
Old time and modern sequence dancing, Village Hall, 7.30C10.30pm. 7.30C8pm new dance taught.
DARLINGTON:
Darlington Rambling Club, Hamsterley ramble of not more than nine miles, leaders Ray &amp; Marjorie Arrowsmith, (tel), meet at ED Walker Homes, Coniscliffe Road, 12 noon.
Jumble Sale, St Cuthberts Church Hall, Market Place, 2C4pm.
It's Back!
Saturday Night Fever with Kevin Paul 50/50 dancing, Dolphin Centre, 8C10.45pm.
An evening of music from St Cuthbert's Choir with organist Andrew Christer and choral conductor Paul Busby, St Cuthbert's Church, 7.30pm.
Entrance free, retiring collection.
TRIMDON GRANGE:
Hartlepool Salvation Army Band and songsters in concert to celebrate the Church's centenary, Methodist Church, Rose Street, 7pm.
Coming Up
TOMORROW:
Sacrament Meeting 10C11am, Sunday School 11.30am-12.15pm, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Cypress Close, Blackwell, Darlington.
Details, tel.
Dolphin Sunday Dance Club, Afternoon Dance, old time and modern sequence dancing, Dolphin Centre, Darlington, 2.15C4.30pm.
Dolphin Sunday Dance Club, 50/50 Dance, Dolphin Centre, Darlington, 7.30pm.
Every Sunday.
Arty facts
PERHAPS Gadfly (Echo February 26) should check his facts about the Spennymoor Town Centre sculpture.
First, the sculptor always intended that the piece should be fitted to the space once it arrived on site.
Isn't this the sensible thing to do?
Second, the sculpture was made by the sculptor on a fixed-price contract.
No additional costs were borne by Sedgefield District Council.
In fact, taking into account assistance from Northern Arts, Steetley and the European Regional Development Fund, the sculpture was extremely good value for the council.
No doubt people will flock to Spennymoor to judge themselves.
J. Litherland, Director of Planning and Technical Services, Sedgefield District Council, Spennymoor.
THE story of a has-been film star's burning desire to stop her only daughter repeating her mother's fate is the theme of Trestle Theatre Company's latest show.
The company, which has developed its own original style of popular mask theatre over the past decade, can be seen at Darlington Arts Centre on Thursday, followed by Stockton's Dovecot Arts Centre on Thursday and Friday.
The company's touring unit now gives around 300 performances a year to more than 37,000 people.
The latest production, Crime of Love, flashes back and forth between 1949 Britain and Hollywood's golden age of silent movies.
It's described as a ' dark thriller with melodramatic overtones which will appeal to all Raymond Chandler fans'.
What's cooking
A COOKERY demonstration which was part of Darlington &amp; District Business Club's monthly meeting turned out to be hot stuff.
The March 4 meeting at The Coachman Hotel started as usual with the club business and the regular draw for a cash prize of 100.
After the free buffet a cookery demonstration by Peter Bell, senior lecturer at Darlington College of Technology, began with the preparation of the ingredients.
All went well until about half way through the demonstration when fumes from some hot oil wafted into the smoke detector above the hob and set off the hotel's fire alarm.
Believing the demonstration to be the cause of the alarm there was little reaction from the members attending the meeting and the Mr Bell continued despite the noise from the alarm bell in the corner of the room.
After a few minutes a barman came in and asked everyone to move outside with the other hotel guests who had been evacuated from the building.
By this time two fire engines and a police van had arrived at the front entrance.
The firemen quickly checked out the hotel and reset the alarm system and after about 10 minutes everyone was back inside.
My source tells me: ' The firemen were very helpful and attempted to remove the offending smoke sensor but could not isolate it from the system so the demonstration continued with shorter cooking times and lower temperatures to reduce the flames.
' Eventually all the cooking was done and the visitors were able to sample some delicious food. '
YOUNG artist Christopher Kerwin shows off the picture and cup he collected after winning the over-14s section of Darlington Lions Club annual art competition.
He also picked up 40 cash.
Hurworth School pupil Christopher, 15, spent five weeks preparing his picture on the theme of Yellow Pages' television adverts.
Runner-up was Katherine Johnson and third Fiona Errington.
MANAGERS at Darlington Arts Centre have announced they no longer want to play host to the town's annual beer festival.
Organisers of the 12-year-old event are now desperately seeking an alternative venue to keep the increasingly popular festival alive.
Last night a spokeswoman for the Arts Centre said the festival has become a victim of its own success.
She said: ' Too many people want to go to the festival and we have just not got the space to accommodate them. '
But Brendan Boyle, of the Darlington Campaign For Real Ale, said the news is a sad blow to all real ale fans in the area.
He thinks Camra will struggle to find a suitable alternative in Darlington.
Last year 1,000 people attended the three day festival and on the Friday and Saturday nights Arts Centre staff were turning beer fans away by 8.15pm.
The previous year regular Arts Centre visitors complained they had been kept out of the centre because of the massive popularity of the festival.
Camra has written to Coun Dot Long, chairman of Darlington council's recreation committee, asking for her help in keeping the festival in Darlington.
Speculation that the Dolphin Centre could be used has been ruled out by Mr Boyle who says it would be too expensive.
Lack of cash for museum scheme
IMPROVEMENTS to Darlington's railway museum look likely to be put on ice because of town hall cash shortages.
Permission has been requested by the Darlington council recreation committee to build a platform on to the railway museum at Hopetown Lane.
But the chairman of the committee, Coun Dot Long (Lab), said lack of cash will almost certainly prevent improvements from being made.
OSCAR-WINNING American George Chakiris is the latest signing for Billingham Forum Theatre's star-packed new season.
The actor, singer and dancer won an Academy Award for his performance in the classic musical West Side Story.
His other movies include 633 Squadron and Kings of the Sun.
He arrives at the Forum in the Tony and Olivier award-winning play M.
Butterfly from April 27 to May 2.
This is based on a true story that shocked Paris society when a French diplomat and a Chinese opera singer were imprisoned after the former was' accused of passing information to China after he fell in love with Mr Shi, whom he believed for 20 years to be a woman '.
The new season opens with Moscow City Ballet with principal dancers from the Bolshoi and Kirov Ballets in Sleeping Beauty from March 16C18.
Musicals play a major part in the Forum line-up.
Dora Bryan repeats her West End role in 70 Girls 70 (May 11C16), while Alvin Stardust treats audiences to A Slice of Saturday Night (May 1823), already seen in York and Darlington.
Peter Blake from Dear John and Barry Howard for Hi-De-Hi star in The Rocky Horror Show (March 24C28).
Then comes (April 6C11) comes the popular Richard Harris comedy Stepping Out, set among students in a church hall tap dancing class.
Dancing at Lughnasa (May 4C9) sounds like a musical but is the award-winning Brian Friel play first seen at London's Royal National Theatre.
This touring production has a cast including Kate Fitzgerald, formerly Brookside's Doreen Corkhill and last seen at the Forum as Shirley Valentine.
Veteran couple Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray star in Alan Ayckbourn's comedy Bedroom Farce (April 13C18) and a stage version of the Ruth Rendell mystery House of Stairs (March 30-April 4) teams Sylvia Syms and Nyree Dawn Porter.
Completing the season is Fireman Sam (April 20C25) a must for many a pre-schooler who follows the tales on the television series of Pontypandy and its fire station.
Forum box office is.
TWO big musical revivals form the backbone of Newcastle Theatre Royal's forthcoming season's line-up.
Liz Robertson and Christopher Cazenove climb every mountain in the previously-announced season of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music from May 26 to June 13.
Now comes news that the Theatre Royal is hosting a month-long season of an equally popular musical Lerner and Lowe's My Fair Lady, coincidentally the show in which Liz Robertson made her name.
This new Lady is directed by actor and writer Simon Callow, who was responsible for the current London hit production of Carmen Jones.
Edward Fox stars as Professor Higgins with costumes by Jaspar Conran.
The show runs from August 18 to September 12.
English Shakespeare Company's Macbeth, seen last week in Darlington, plays at the Newcastle theatre from May 5C9 with Michael Pennington and Jenny Quayle as the Macbeths.
The Sir Peter Hall Company premieres the new Stephen Poliakoff play Sienna Road from May 11C16.
Tours of Brian Friel's Dancing at Lunghnasa (June 29-July 4) and Roald Dahl's The BFG (July 14C18) also stop-off in the city.
Scottish Opera returns in June for a season that's already heavily booked.
London Contemporary Dance are on stage from May 20C23 and Northern Ballet Theatre's controversial Swan Lake runs from June 23C27.
Newcastle's Theatre Royal box office is.
Charley's Aunt:
Darlington Civic Theatre FOR all that Charley's Aunt is in its 100th year, this production starring Mark Curry in the title role is as fresh as ever.
Set at the height of Victoria's rule, the story revolves around three Oxford undergraduates who have nothing better to do than court young females, have parties and be awfully brassic.
Of course upper class, nothing but Victorian convention guides their whims and wishes.
And cynical but obedient man servant Brassett (Nick Bayly).
Brandon Thomas's play reflects the social propriety that meant young ladies were always chaperoned in mixed company even to a lunch party such being in 15 minutes time wasn't thought unusual.
That's where Charley's Aunt was supposed to come in, to chaperon the swooning sweeties Kitty and Amy, but a last moment delay left Jack and Charles desperate.
Christopher Lamb (Jack Chesney), and Jonathan Markwood (Charles Wykeham) set the opening scene rather woodenly, and the play didn't lift until Lord Fancourt Babberley (Mark Curry) was bullied into his amateur dramatics costume to be the long-awaited aunt, Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez.
The anxious student in strange female dress jittered at any provocation.
Curry played on that sense of panic when intimately caught with the money-grabbing Spettigue (Patrick Cargill) or the more civilised Sir Francis Chesney (Frank Windsor) who eventually found his long lost love when the real Donna Lucia did arrive.
Occasionally Curry used panto dame slapstick, rather than emulating the sophistication of a wealthy millionaire widow fresh from Brazil ' where the nuts come from ', portrayed sympathetically by Gabrielle Drake.
And Thomas had Ela Delahay, the companion to Donna Lucia and earnest love of Babberley, for fate to act kindly on the poor boy.
The farcical element throughout was dateless, showing how the Victorians could laugh at their own conventions.
HUMOUR is a personal thing as the Hippodrome comic's pub crawl demonstrates but in December 1904 much of Darlington was chuckling about the way fate dealt a cruel blow to J F Latimer.
Mr Latimer, a solicitor with offices in Priestgate (the firm is still there), was a leading Temp (this, as regular Echo Memories readers will know, does not refer to the transitory nature of his position but to his teetotal outlook).
A firm called The Commondale ran its business from the floor above his office, advertising its presence with its name emblazoned on the window.
On December 6 frost struck (see picture above) and some of the sticky letters lost their stickiness and tumbled off.
Thus, the window above Mr Latimer's office appeared to carry the exhortation: ' Go on ale '.
AN IDEA trickled into Joseph Pease's head in 1865.
He had just developed the ' mural fountain ' concept and stuck the first one on the wall by the entrance to his mansion in Grange Road.
He thought: ' Perhaps Darlington as a whole would like a complete set. '
So in March 1866 he offered eight to the town and the Local Government Board agreed to lay on free water.
Out of nine mural, or wall, drinking fountains, only three appear to survive.
The sites of several others are not known.
All the mural fountains were built on the boundaries of properties belonging to the Pease family.
The most ornate spouters were in Woodland Road (extant) and Carmel Road (disappeared since the 1950s).
The surrounding carved stonework contained the date, and in the middle were metal panels displaying a dolphin with bulrushes.
Over the dolphin's head hung a trident to signify Neptune, the god of the waters.
In the middle at the top was the Pease family crest: A dove rising with a pea stalk in its beak.
The metalwork also bore the legend ' Water for the Thirsty '.
The other wall founts were not so elaborate.
They were situated in Coniscliffe Road (extant), Northgate, North Road (both disappeared since the Fifties), near the gateway to the East Mount mansion in Haughton Road (disappeared when East Mount was demolished after the Second World War), and two at either end of the Bank Top Cut (vanished when the cut was widened in the 1930s).
High praise in any language
C'EST impossible modern language teachers at a Northallerton school are achieving the impossible, according to one of Her Majesty's Inspectors.
The inspector found lower ability classes were two years ahead of similar groups in other schools and observed teachers achieving what other schools had told him was impossible.
He said he had seen more high quality language teaching in one day at Allertonshire School than in his previous 12 months of inspection.
Trio play:
The Bill Watson Trio will be performing between 12.30pm and 1.30pm on March 27 at St Catherine's Church, Crook.
Carol song:
The Carol Andrews singers from Darlington appear in a charity concert in Bishop Auckland on May 3 to raise money for the South-West Durham Hospice Appeal.
Tickets cost 6.50 and are available from Sheilagh Walker Travel, Newgate Street.
Telephone bookings can be made on Bishop Auckland.
Boot sale: Shildon AFC Social Club hopes to hold car boot sales throughout the summer.
The decision follows a successful sale at the Dean Street football ground yesterday.
Willington, 5C7pm.
WEDNESDAY: Crook and District Dog Training Club, Church Hall, Market Place, Crook, 6C8.30pm.
Details, tel.
Mrs Hall on.
Modern sequence dance night, WMC, Manor Street, Evenwood, 8.30pm.
Cottage Crafts, Old Church Hall, Frosterley, 1.30C4.30pm.
Details, tel.
.
Live blues night, Misty Blue Inn, Spennymoor, 8C11pm.
In tune:
A full-length musical based on the biblical story of Job is about to burst on to the stage in York.
The Devil's Wager is a production with a difference because everything, from stage management to song-writing, is the work of young people still in their teens.
The Teenact Theatre Company, based in York, exists to provide opportunities for youngsters in the performing arts.
McCapra String Quartet:
Darlington Arts Centre THERE are many promising young string quartets on today's music circuit.
Few however achieve the qualities that the McCapra String Quartet brought to their Darlington Music Society recital in the Arts Centre on Saturday evening.
From the first bars of Mozart's ' Hunt ' Quartet it was obvious that their effortlessly fluent and natural playing was at the service of artistic integrity.
Their sense of balance between the sublime and robust in Mozart's music was impeccable.
If Mozart is the essence of flowing line and elegantly shaped melodic phrases, Malcolm Arnold achieves his effects in his Second String Quartet by contrast and variety of colour and intensity, together with flashes of acerbic humour.
It proved a work of appealing ingenuity with many reference points to hold the listener's attention.
At its heart is a slow movement of great intensity and spellbinding simplicity, magically performed.
Speaking of slow movements, that of Beethoven's last string quartet, Op. 135 is without doubt the most moving and peaceful of any in the entire quartet repertoire.
Its mystical character was marvellously caught by the young players whose approach to the work as a whole was a shade more romantic than many and none the worse for that.
Given an enthusiastic ovation from the large audience, they responded with a light as thistledown performance of the finale of Haydn's Op. 33/2 ' joke ' quartet as encore.
Final concert in the DMS season is on April 4 when American pianist Ruth Geiger appears.
Bobby Wellins Quintet:
Darlington Arts Centre THIS was the third time this season that jazz at the Arts Centre has clashed with a jazz concert elsewhere, this time with the Stan Tracey Octet in Gateshead.
As a result, a smaller than average audience was there to hear Bobby's current band.
His last appearance in Darlington was about three years ago, and since then this quintet has been formed with Jez Hall on tenor sax, Nikki Iles on piano, Gary Culshaw electric bass and Tony Faulkner drums.
The rhythm section provided a perfect cushion for the soloists, springy and supportive but never obtrusive.
Nikki's solos were delicate, usually starting in the middle of the keyboard and moving steadily higher, but also, when needed, she provided a bouncier sound as on Bobby Timmons' This Here.
Jez Hall's tenor sax sound is lighter and warmer than Bobby's providing just enough contrast in their many solos but also doubling mellower than before but still with a crying, keening sounding that taps enormous depths of feeling.
The programme included several original compositions such as C.U.C.B.
(dedicated to Clifford Brown with Glasgow connotations) and The Promised Land, a tribute to Al Cohn and Zoot Sims.
Most moving of all was Duke Ellington's In A Sentimental Mood in which Bobby's solo was plaintive and heartfelt.
The balance and sound for this concert were superb with every note clearly hear, making it a totally enjoyable concert.
Cambridge chorister returns to sing
MISS Susan Chadwick, daughter of the Rector of Egglescliffe, the Rev. Roger Chadwick, is among choristers who sing tonight at Northallerton parish church.
The chapel choir of Christ's College, Cambridge, also performs tomorrow at evensong in Darlington parish church, followed by a concert at 8pm.
Their five-night tour takes in Durham Cathedral on Monday and Selby Abbey on Tuesday and culminates with Evensong at York Minster on Wednesday.
While the tour is an exciting musical event in its own right, it has also provided its organiser, Miss Chadwick, with the chance to renew her links with the North and its musical scene.
She grew up in the area, most recently living in Northallerton where she worked for North Yorkshire county council.
' I have always sung in choirs, most recently with that of Northallerton parish church and with the York Early Music Choir, directed by Mr Clive Harries.
' When I came to Cambridge University as a mature student I joined the chapel choir and was glad of the opportunity of the tour to develop and strengthen the connections which already existed, ' she said.
' The choir is small, enthusiastic and, of course, young.
We perform a wide variety of choral music ranging from the 16th century to the present day. '
Miss Chadwick added that they sing two services a week and in addition perform larger choral works in the concerts they stage once or twice a term.
Recent performances have included Haydn's Creation, Mozart C minor mass, Kodaly Missa Brevis and the Bach Motets Singet dem Herrn and Jesu Meine Freude.
Future plans include a recording and a tour of Belgium and the Netherlands for the choir, which is led by Huw Williams, the senior organ scholar.
Mr Williams recently received the Lympus prize in his FRCO exams and has just been offered a place at the Royal Academy of Music to study organ performance.
The choir with Miss Chadwick pictured front row, second left.
A CHOIR from Cambridge University yesterday busked in Durham city.
Members of the Christ College chapel choir took time out to sing on the Durham streets before a concert in Durham Cathedral last night.
Their five-night tour continues in Selby Abbey today and finishes in York Minster tomorrow.
The choir also sang at St Cuthbert's Church, Darlington, on Sunday night.
A TALENTED teenager is through to the national finals of a top competition for electric pianos.
Darlington Sixth Form College student Lisa Battersby, 17, of Springwell, Ingleton, played her way into the Clavinova finals by winning North region heats in Preston at the weekend.
The Clavinova is a compact version of a piano which plays the recorded sound of real piano notes.
' It's just like a piano and so much so that we haven't even got one at home and I didn't practice on one before the competition I can just switch to playing it instead of a piano, ' said Lisa.
On April 26, Lisa is to go to the Royal College of Music, in London, to take on the best of British players in the national finals.
DARLINGTON people are to get the chance to reinterpret a Greek tragedy with the help of two acclaimed North-East dramatists.
From May, the town's Arts Centre will be hosting a new project linking County Durham people with award-winning Newcastle playwright Rob Wooden and director Jane Howell.
The scheme is called the Antigones Project and will create a new play based on Sophocles' tragedy Antigone in which the heroine seeks revenge.
DARLINGTON'S Spring Thing folk festival began last night with music from Tyneside band the Hokum Hotshots.
As well as folk enthusiasts the Darlington Arts Centre, which is playing host to the four-day festival, was crowded with real ale fans enjoying the Campaign For Real Ale's Small Beer Festival.
Among the highlights of the festival will be the town centre procession which leaves Darlington town hall at 12.45pm.
Morris dancers will make their way through the centre of town to the Arts Centre before taking part in the afternoon activities.
Festival organisers also hope for high standard of competition in a new music competition to be held for the first time this year.
The Brian Whitmee Singers' Competition has been established in memory of the former organiser of Richmond Folk Club who died last year from cancer, aged 44.
Mr Whitmee gave his last singing performance to Darlington Folk Club and is fondly remembered by many members.
Already 18 people have signed up for the competition and it is hoped it will be a fitting tribute to one of the club's favourite performers.
THE Spring Thing folk festival began last night with music from Tyneside band the Hokum Hotshots.
As well as folk enthusiasts the Darlington Arts Centre, which is playing host to the four day festival, was crowded with real ale fans enjoying the Campaign For Real Ale's Small Beer Festival.
Among the highlights of the festival will be a town centre procession in which Morris dancers will make their way through the town to the Arts Centre.
Festival organisers also hope for high standard of music in a competition to be held for the first time.
The Brian Whitmee Singers' Competition has been established in memory of the former organiser of Richmond Folk Club who died last year from cancer, aged 44.
Mr Whitmee gave his last singing performance to Darlington Folk Club and is fondly remembered by many members.
Already 18 people have signed up for the competition and it is hoped it will be a fitting tribute to one of the club's favourite performers.
DURHAM concert secretaries have made another contribution to a local cancer relief fund.
For the past five years members of the Durham Concert Secretaries Federation have held fund-raising events on behalf of the Wareham Wood Memorial Fund for cancer relief and the latest cheque was handed over at a special ceremony at Osborne Social Club, Chester-le-Street.
The cheque, for 600, was presented by the Federation's secretary John Pragnell.
The money was raised at the Federation's Annual Awards Show last November.
The Durham Concert Secretaries Federation which works in conjunction with the clubs, artists and agents, is always on the look-out for new member clubs.
Any committee interested is invited to send a representatives to the Annual General Meeting to be held at Pelaw Social Club on Saturday March 28 at 10.30am.
MURTON Brass Band has been in existence for more than 100 years and to say thank you to the people of the village who have kept the band going, they are to give a concert at the Victoria Club.
Past members will be joining in on Wednesday March 25.
SEAHAM Red Star Social Club is putting on a charity night in aid of the Sir Malcolm Sergeant Cancer Fund for Young Children on Thursday March 26.
Topping the bill will be comedy impressionist Al Meechie.
TRIMDON Grange Workingmen's Club, which came out of receivership three years ago, is aiming to become one of the most popular clubs in the area.
Chairman Alan Potts explained: ' The Club went through a bad period in the eighties but happily we resolved the problems. '
One idea that has born fruit is the installation of satellite TV ' especially the sports channel '.
Highlight of this month's calendar is a charity show in aid of Leukaemia Research on Thursday March 26.
Cindy Marie, Inseparable and Paul Monroe will entertain and tickets are on sale at 1.50 each.
COUNTRY music fans are always well catered for at Hartlepool Workingmen's Club.
Future shows include:
Saturday March 21, the Rufus Stone Country Band, on tour from London and Saturday March 28, Leeds-based Saddle Tramp Country Band.
Cover charge for each show is only 50p.
A FULL house is expected at Thornley WMC when the Ever Ready Brass Band appear in concert on Tuesday March 24.
Tickets are fast selling out at 1 each.
THE final of the current talent competition at Blackhall Royal British Legion Club will be held on Friday March 27.
FUNNY man John Garimore and supporting show are featured in a special cabaret night at Rise Carr WMC, Darlington on Friday April 3.
TFM's Nick Wright hosts the third heat of The Mall's new search for a star Talent ' 92 on Monday March 23.
TOP prize winners in the Stanley and District Mid-Week Games League were Lanchester Social Club and South Moor Social Club.
Sandhole WMC won the dominoes title.
THE darts squad of North Biddick Social Club, Fatfield, has won the Sunderland and District Darts League for eight consecutive seasons plus the League Supreme Champions trophy on six occasions.
FORMER chairman of Craghead Social Club, Johnny Glister, received the CIU long service certificate from Durham branch president George Lawson and gold badge from divisional representative Mattie Younger.
A surprise presentation was also made to one of the region's most popular charity entertainers, Billy Dobson.
He has appeared in charity shows at the club for more than 20 years and we well-known throughout the area for his untiring efforts for worthy causes.
 Something going on at your club?
Tell Neil Harris about it.
Telephone now!
A Night At The Music Hall:
Darlington Civic Theatre HE can still do the high kicks and he still has that sexy giggle, even though he must be at least...
The ' he ' in question is Mr Moonlight himself, Frankie Vaughan, star of A Night at the Music Hall, on until Saturday at Darlington Civic Theatre.
All the old favourites are there in a medley of hits which, like him, have hardly failed to age over 30 years since they first hit the charts.
Green Door, Give Me the Moonlight, Hello Dolly and Tower of Strength are among those retaining that old magic.
The audience didn't want to let him go and he returned to sing a little jazz, leaving the stage to rapturous applause.
A superb supporting ' cast ' included Hi Di Hi star Paul Shane, whose quick wit had the audience in stitches.
Lots of oneliners flowed as the professional polish of a top-rate comedian shone through.
And there was he joined up with ' Our Eli ' and Jim Casey for more laughs later on.
A hushed audience listened to quality singing star Joan Regan, who seemed at first a little nervous but relaxed with what must be one of her own favourites, May You Always.
And the unique support was in the form of ventriloquist Neville King, glamorous magicians Secret Trix and the marvellous marionettes of Pavlov's Puppets.
All introduced by worthy chairman Mr Johnny Dennis.
BAFTA boys
IT was said here yesterday that Vic Reeves, the Darlington alternative comedian (that is somebody who doesn't make you laugh which is alternative to a comedian) was the sole North-East recipient of a gong at the BAFTA awards the other night.
That was of course this space's alternative joke (that is, not a joke at all).
All the way from Los Angeles Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais accepted the award for best adapted screenplay.
The pair adapted the book The Commitments together with its author Roddy Doyle.
The North-East connection is of course that La Frenais comes from Whitley Bay.
Not only that he and Clement wrote the great television comedy The Likely Lads and its successor Whatever Happened?
That apart there were definitely no North-East BAFTA award winners.
Probably.
And hands up anyone who thinks Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer are funnier than Terry Collier and Bob Ferris.
THE BOWES Museum will mark its centenary in three months' time.
It promises to be a glittering affair involving, it says here, the ' physicalisation of objects in the museum. '
When investigations have concluded and it is discovered what that means the information and whether founders John and Josephine Bowes have turned in their graves will be reported here.
The event, optimistically, is' due to take place on a warm summer's evening in June ' (the 10th).
Concert:
The Richardson Singers sing a selection of sacred music on April 5, at 7.45pm, in St Augustine's Church, Coniscliffe Road, Darlington.
Tickets 2.
Details on.
Music: Harvey's Club Cafe in Church Road, Stockton has announced its music programme for Thursdays in April.
On Apr 2 Papa George returns; on Apr 9 Roger Higgins plays a Blues Set that will not mention the election; Apr 16 Citizen Kane return; Apr 23 Tony McPhee and The Groundhogs; and on Apr 30 the Blues Roosters appear.
Plus the Mick Whittaker band are in residence at Harvey's every Tuesday.
Gala:
Stars from the National English Opera, Janice Cairns (soprano) and Anthony Mee (tenor) are singing in a Grand Opera Gala with full orchestra and chorus at Sunderland Empire at 7.30pm, Saturday March 28.
Tickets 6.50-15.
Box office is.
 THE annual buffet dance at North Ormesby Institute raised 150 for the Mayor of Middlesbrough's Charity Fund.
THE art of clog dancing was on display in Darlington at the weekend.
A workshop was held at the Arts Centre in Vane Terrace as part of the town's exuberant Spring Thing folk festival.
Members of the Cleveland Clog Dancers group were on hand to offer instruction in the important steps.
The workshop was free for visitors, part of the festival organisers' aim of encouraging more people to take an interest in dance.
Between 25 and 30 people aged from about ten upwards enjoyed the experience.
A ROW has broken out over an exhibition of photography by lesbians.
Conservative borough councillor Bill Stenson has called for the display at Darlington Arts Centre to be removed after receiving complaints.
In future he wants the recreation committee to have the chance to veto controversial exhibitions.
But Labour committee chairwoman Dot Long says Coun Stenson is on ' very dangerous ground. '
She argues it is not the council's job to act as a censor and people who are likely to be offended do not have to see the exhibition.
Stolen Glances features pictures by ten lesbian photographers and has been at the council-funded Arts Centre for two weeks.
Photo montages include a lesbian woman added into pictures of film stars Audrey Hepburn and Julie Andrews, a series of shots about a Gay woman's experience of developing multiple sclerosis, and a picture of two embracing lesbians superimposed onto magazine covers and adverts.
More controversial shots of a spoof wedding ceremony and a lesbian couple kissing, both featuring bare breasts, have been placed in the second of two rooms housing the exhibition.
A sign telling parents to keep their children under supervision and a poster stating the exhibition is of lesbian photography are at the gallery entrance.
Coun Stenson went to the show himself on Saturday after receiving several complaints and believes the pictures should be removed before the closure date of April 25.
He fears unsupervised children could see the more controversial pictures.
He said: ' I am not discriminating against lesbians.
' I think this could corrupt, we have to be careful about what we have in our town.
If they want to show things like this they should show it in private. '
Coun Long said she shared Coun Stenson's concern for children and emphasised the Arts Centre brochure of events said the exhibition was unsuitable for youngsters.
If children did visit they should be with an adult who could explain the pictures or stop them from seeing the more controversial ones.
She said people did not have to view the show if they were likely to find it offensive and while she found some photographs disturbing they should still be shown so people could form their own opinions.
 More than 80 comments on the exhibition are included in the Arts Centre visitors' book, of which around 45 were positive, around 25 negative including several asking for children to be kept out and the rest ambiguous.
YOUNG ballerinas from Polam Hall School in Darlington received high praise for high kicking their way to 100pc success in dance exams.
Certificates were awarded to 63 girls who all passed 93pc of them passed with either a merit or distinction.
Among the successful dancers were Laura Snowdon, 14, and Kate Barnes, 15, who both study ballet as part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.
Laura, from Hurst, near Richmond, and Kate, from Hurworth, gained distinctions in their grade five ballet exams.
Their teacher, Sue Hewgill, of the Dance Studio, at Polam Hall School, said she was delighted with all the girls' results.
THE Rubber Bishops, pictured right and billed as' probably the funniest double act in the country ', appear at The Institute in Skinnergate, Darlington, on Wednesday night.
Ben Cauthen, from Newcastle's Comedy Cafe, and Anvil Springstein, resident compere of Harvey's in Stock ton, will be compering the evening.
Doors open at 8pm, tickets 3.50.
Theatre night:
Willy Russell's comedy Shirley Valentine will be at York Theatre Royal from May 25 to 30.
Bread star Pamela Power stars.
Poster contest: Sheriff of York Coun Bernard Bell will judge the finals of the Tesco Caring for the Environment Poster Competition on April 1.
YOUNG ballerinas from Polam Hall School in Darlington gained a 100pc pass rate in Royal Academy dance exams.
Certificates were awarded to the 63 girls who all passed at a variety of levels in the recent exams.
Of those 93pc passed with either a merit or distinction.
Among the successful dancers were Laura Snowdon, 14, and Kate Barnes, 15, who both study ballet as part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.
Both Laura, from Hurst, near Richmond, and Kate, from Hurworth, gained distinctions in their grade five ballet exams.
Their teacher, Sue Hewgill, of the Dance-in Studio at Polam Hall School, said she is delighted with all the girls' results.
Helen Hamilton, Polam Hall head teacher, joined Darlington Conservative candidate Michael Fallon in presenting the awards to the schoolgirls.
THE official opening of Darlington's Skerne Park neighbourhood house was performed by housing chairman Bill Dixon and residents' association chairwoman Joyce Standing.
Also pictured is Darlington Labour candidate Alan Milburn.
The house aims to give a community service.
A TEAM of Darlington schoolgirls are on their way to the national finals of a public speaking competition.
Senior students from the Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College won the North-East round of a competition organised by the UK Federation of Business and Professional Women.
The college team spoke on Mad Dogs and Englishmen to win a place at the finals in Glasgow on April 23.
Darlington's Polam Hall School was runner-up with a talk entitled The Shape of Things to Come and student Nadine Bell was named best chairman.
Judges gave the best speaker award to Sandyha Surt and the best expresser of thanks to Emma Gaunt, both of the Queen Elizabeth College.
The divisional final at Gateshead was sponsored by Northern Electric, Northumberland Training and Enterprise Council, and the northern region of the TGWU.
YOUNGSTERS from a Darlington dance studio were kept on their toes yesterday at a workshop on the world's most famous ballet.
Suzanne Whitworth, who works in the education unit at the Northern Ballet Theatre, gave a ballet class and a workshop on Swan Lake.
About 30 girls from the Dance-In Studio in Darlington took part in the session, which taught them a small part of the ballet.
Ruth Geiger: Sunderland Art Gallery
THE Vienna-born American pianist Ruth Geiger who started her week-long North-East tour in Sunderland Art Gallery on Tuesday, is an extremely fine artiste.
Her recital for the Sunderland Piano Society began with a performance of Haydn's Andante and Variations in F Minor in which firmness, consistency and a sense of ease allowed the work to expand and develop naturally.
A similar overall vision was apparent in Schubert's A Minor Op 164 Sonata.
Here in the slow movement she allowed the gentle principal theme to flow naturally and above all musically.
In the finale the abrupt changes of pace were contrasted to always good musical effect.
Leos Janacek's On An Overgrown Path is very much a work of atmosphere and impressions.
Its course of ten short sound pieces are like an aural snapshot album, each one conjuring up visions in the hearer's imagination.
Here they were played with affection and an aware responsiveness to Janacek's uniquely personal musical language that created, in the later works of the group particularly, an intensity that belied their relative brevity.
The different impressionism of Debussy's La Terace des Audiences de Claire de Lune, General Levine and Jardins Sous la Pluie ended a recital that was notable for its highly musical restraint and total lack of overt virtuosity for its own sake.
Ruth Geiger can be heard in Newcastle tonight, North Shields tomorrow and Darlington Music Society on Saturday.
Swan Lake:
Darlington Civic Theatre CAn't see what all the fuss was about really.
This was the production that was supposed to have had simulated sex and a strip-o-gram plus a rollerskater.
I caught the rollerskating bit but am afraid the rest of it must have passed me by.
The Northern Ballet Theatre company production is far from controversial and provocative.
It's sensual, yes, and passionate but did not deserve the criticism that it was soft porn.
Instead it is a superb adaptation of the much-danced Swan Lake.
Artistic director Christopher Gable has injected it with a new lease of life and brought it to a completely different audience.
It's hard to fault the production as it has everything from passion to drama to sadness and comedy.
It was refreshing to hear the audience actually giggling at the humour and the NBT shows that ballet can be fun.
Full marks go to the costume and set designers.
Visually the ballet is a treat to the eye.
The costumes are vivid and colourful with a distinct Russian feel while the sets are highly imaginative yet subtle.
The dancers all showed a great joy in their work as they danced to the rousing Tchaikovsky score and special mention must go to lead dancers Victoria Westall and Antony Harith.
Even the most veteran balletomane can not fail to be moved by the production and the dying swan scene at the end brought a few tears in the audience.
The production continues at Darlington Civic until Saturday.
Bowes Musical evening:
A Cavalcade of Music will be presented by Bowes Drama Group at the village hall tomorrow and Saturday evening.
About 30 members of the group, along with a number of schoolchildren, will be taking part.
The shows, featuring songs from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, My Fair Lady and Oklahoma, will begin at 7.30pm.
Tickets are 3 and 2.50 for children and OAPs.
There will be a licensed bar and hot supper.
A controversial new version of Swan Lake, branded soft porn by critics, has left Darlington theatregoers asking what all the fuss was about.
The Mail on Sunday reported that Northern Ballet Theatre's production featured erotic love scenes, a roller skating comic, a ' strippogram ' and a simulated sex act.
But there were no complaints from the capacity crowd at Darlington Civic Theatre on opening night.
The theatre's director of publicity, Steve Luck, said: ' It was absolutely brilliant.
The audience were full of praise for the whole production.
' After all the controversy that surrounded it, we were congratulated for sticking to our guns and doing the production. '
Mr Luck said that the Mail on Sunday's critic had only seen a rehearsal for the play.
Tory councillor Peter Jones, who originally called for a ban, said: ' I will not be going to see it.
I stand by my remarks concerning Tchaikovsky's music being misused in this manner. '
 Swan's new life: Page 27.
WEDNESDAY evening, 7.30: In Coronation Street Mavis is once again getting her pinny in a twist, and in Coronation Road William Hague is moving effortlessly onto automatic pilot.
Coronation Road is in Crakehall, an attractive North Yorkshire village with a restored corn mill, a welcoming pub, a church dedicated to Gregory (the patron saint of singers) and thousands of daffodils wearing Liberal Democrat yellow.
William Hague is a Conservative, the defending candidate in Richmond.
Though Jim Lumb, his agent, describes him as' a bit of an orator ' it is not chiefly for Hague's speaking skills that we have left the video running at home.
It's because Richmond Tories are just about the region's last bastion of a once great electoral tradition the village hall public meeting.
Jim Lumb, who looks like John Cleese, says they're having 18; William Hague says it's 20.
Sometimes he does two a night.
' This is the 12th or 13th, ' he says.
In Reeth they attracted 72 people, says Jim Lumb.
Hawes was a bit thin, he adds, but it was sleeting.
And in Colburn, the biggest and possibly most Labour-inclined village in the constituency, there won't be a meeting at all.
Lumb says it's because they don't have a branch there, but we think it's solid Labour to look at all the blue posters.
' We've always had public meetings.
In a constituency as big as this, it's the only way for many people to meet the candidate.
' Elsewhere they seem to have died out completely, which is a great shame. '
Crakehall village hall, in Coronation Road, is an impressive building with, upstairs, an Arthur Daley room dedicated not to a nice little earner but to a much missed late resident.
Downstairs there's ladies' keep fit in one room and the William Hague roadshow in another.
Both seem to have attracted around 30 people; Hague, named last year as the fittest man in the House, would probably have been at home in either.
One woman has brought the blunt ended equivalent of a shooting stick, which turns out not to be needed.
Hague 31, sharp, ambitious was elected at the 1989 by-election with a 2,634 majority.
A Rotherham lad with a residual accent, he is already PPS to the Chancellor.
He arrives spot on time, is introduced in 15 words and goes off at high speed.
Though there is no tub to thump he talks animatedly with his hands.
It's efficient and knowledgable, but dispassionate.
' I don't say exactly the same thing every time, ' he insists afterwards.
But our notion that public meetings are simply preaching to the converted is dispelled by antagonistic questioning on student loans, pilot training and crime.
Someone else wants to know about VAT on thoroughbred horse breeders.
The thoroughbred horse breeding industry, it seems, is just about knackered.
It ends exactly at 8.30, as the candidate had asked that it should.
Afterwards we have a pint in the welcoming pub, where there's a poem on the wall about telling a man who boozes by the company he chooses.
At home we switch on the video and fall asleep in the chair almost before Mavis has opened up shop.
Only six days to go.
Richard Who?
ACTOR Richard Franklin faces his toughest role yet Lib Dem candidate in the safest Labour seat in England.
Franklin, who lives in a handsomely converted chapel in Middleham William Hague's patch is best remembered as Capt Mike Yates in Dr Who and Dennis Rigg, the resident rotter in Emmerdale Farm.
Written out of both, he insists that he's not ready to be written off in Sheffield Brightside where blind Labour candidate David Blunkett protects a 24,191 majority over the Conservatives.
' The Labour council has made a terrible mess of Sheffield, ' he says.
' It's a derelict city and in Brightside it's there for all to see.
' We 'll be a good second and the Tories will be a bad third. '
Just a year ago the ever-amiable Franklin, traditionally coy about his age, was set to stand as a Conservative Against the Poll Tax in the Ribble Valley by-election.
He'd been a Labour Party member too.
He withdrew 13 minutes before nominations closed ' because I didn't want an election by media. '
His appearance on Brightside's stage was almost as dramatic the previous candidate withdrew just days before nominations closed.
' In Ribble Valley I realised that the Liberals' poll tax policies were exactly the same as the ones I'd worked out, based on reason and logic, in my own back room, ' he says.
The Sheffield Star, in a piece not destined to endear him to the average Brightside voter, wrote of his' ministerial pin stripes and patrician smooth accent. '
Doreen Huddart, his agent, was described as a ' blunt Geordie. '
She's from Washington.
' There's a lot of disillusionment about the Labour council and an enormous World Student Games factor, ' she says, bluntly.
' They wasted billions on that. '
They mightn't win Brightside, adds Doreen, but they're hopeful of Hillsborough and getting good returns in Hallam, where reigned South Yorkshire's lone Tory.
Franklin, Sheffield's answer to Glenda Jackson, is upbeat.
' There's me, the agent, one man and a dog but the response has been terrific.
' I 'm not playing it on my past, or standing for the publicity, but it obviously opens doors. '
If they want him, he says, he 'll be back.
What's called looking on the Brightside.
VIC Reeves' parents have put their Darlington house on the market to stop the comedian's fans hounding them.
Neil and Audrey Moir, who live in Hewitson Road, were forced to have their telephone number listed ex-directory last year due to their son's success.
Mrs Moir said: ' We used to get three or four calls a night asking for Vic. '
Mr Moir, who used to work for North of England Newspapers, publishers of The Northern Echo, said: ' Wherever we go with him we are stopped by autograph hunters.
We were followed around Northallerton by giggling schoolgirls. '
The couple plan to move into a bungalow and hope to keep their address secret.
A neighbour said: ' We don't see them very often and they keep very much to themselves. '
Vic, born in Leeds, moved to Darlington when he was five.
He went to Eastbourne secondary school before carving out a comic career in London.
His Big Night Out programme on Channel 4 has built up a cult following.
A DARLINGTON artist who has set up her own business is painting for a Prince.
Megan Burford, whose business Aquarelle is based at her home in Lansdowne Street, is to have her work displayed at the Princes Trust exhibition at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham.
Prince Charles will be a special guest at the exhibition.
At the moment the 26-yearold has a display at the Marsh Gallery in New Romney in Kent.
She set up the business with her husband Jeremy after receiving a 3,000 grant from the Princes Trust and help from Darlington Business Venture.
Mrs Burford, who undertook one year of an A level art course at Darlington Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College and went to Hummersknott School, mostly paints pets and wildlife.
Her exhibition is to move from New Romney to Canterbury.
She is to be artist of the month at Darlington Art Gallery in September.
ONE of the leading lights in a Darlington choir has died.
Bill Askew, of Thornbury Rise, Darlington, was secretary of the Carol Andrews singers, a successful mixed choir which has taken part in international competitions.
He died aged 66 after an 18-month battle against cancer.
A keen music lover he was also honorary general secretary of the Darlington Music Festival which finished at the weekend.
His widow Carol said: ' A cloud hung over the festival a bit as Bill died the day before the final.
He had donated the WT Askew trophy to the festival and it was presented on Saturday night.
Bill would have been very proud of that moment. '
Mr Askew, born in Crook, was a retired police superintendent and also worked as a consultant at ICI.
The funeral takes place today at Harrowgate Hill Methodist Church, Darlington, at 12.15pm.
