Home-grown talent puts North on leader board

Dec 30 2008 by Sam Wonfor, The Journal

AS the merriment of New Year's Eve approaches, Sam Wonfor takes a look through her 2008 diary and goes cherry picking.

COULD there be a better way to return from maternity leave than what I somehow managed to snaffle on July 20, 2008? I doubt it.

Not only had I enjoyed a whole 381 days of baby bliss, but I then got to come back on the day a certain pocket-sized icon was strutting her perfectly formed stuff around the stage at the Metro Radio Arena.

Kylie Minogue had made a quartet of dates with Tyneside this summer and I had the pop-filled pleasure of seeing the first one, which turned out to be a true spectacle in all the good senses of the word.

A 36-hour trip to Edinburgh also shines out from my infuriatingly complicated electronic organiser as a must-mention entry.

I was tasked with finding the best of what the North East had to offer at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which basically translated as me seeing some great comedy and drama in a great city.

Stand-up-wise I saw Gavin Webster, Seymour Mace and South Shields’s Sarah Millican, who ended up winning the used-to-be-Perrier Best Newcomer award. A high five would be appropriate here.

I also got to see the now Strictly legend Jill Halfpenny, who was impressively juggling her new role as mum to the lovely Harvey with the role of Spike Milligan’s manager Norma alongside Michael Barrymore in Surviving Spike at the Assembly Rooms.

Obviously the plaudits she received for her performance will have paled in significance since she was crowned Christmas Strictly Champion 2008, but I’m going to repeat mine anyway. She was simply terrific.

My last box office ticket got me into a sell-out performance of Motherland, a powerful collaboration between Live Theatre and Northumbria University.

You’d struggle to find a more moving piece of verbatim theatre than this, which was based on stories of and interviews with mothers, wives, girlfriends and sisters of service personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq. The cast and the real women who gave them their words were awarded the Spirit of the Fringe Award. The play also deservedly won The Stage award for Best Ensemble.

Actually, that reminds me of a pre-return-to-work highlight that I must mention.

After missing the autumn 2007 run of Lee Hall’s Pitmen Painters which opened the remodeled Live Theatre, I was thrilled when the play (which won a 2007 Culture Award for Best Performance) got itself a rerun in the spring.

Soaked in North East warmth and humour, the story of the Ashington miners who became the darlings of the art world in the 1930s was a joy.

I’m running out of space here but must mention the launch event to the inaugural Juice Festival for children and young people. Surrendering drumsticks in their wake, Rio de Janeiro percussion outfit AfroLata blew me away.

And just before I sign off, a quick encore applause to Enchanted Parks, which turned Gateshead’s Saltwell Park into a magical winter wonderland.