Today's Joanna Page is Fat Pig, Neil LaBute's size-related comedy play, which has been running in London for a good few months now. In fact, I've already reviewed it - twice.

However, from the 11th September, it's going to be moving away from the Trafalgar Studios to the Comedy Theatre and Rob Webb and Kris Marshall are going to be replaced by Nick Burns and Kevin Bishop respectively. Then from October, Joanna Page is going to be off filming the Gavin & Stacey Christmas special and is going to be replaced by Kelly Brook. No word on what's happening with Ella Smith, yet.

So here's a publicity shot of our Joanna with Kevin Bishop (photo by Simon Turtle). And this is her (with Matthew Horne) in Gavin & Stacey:

What a chameleon. How's she do that?

PS There's a video on the Fat Pig web site in which Neil LaBute interviews the current cast. In it, Rob Webb admits there was an evening where he chose to play Tom as “a complete spoon” then changed his mind and went back to playing it the original way. Any want to bet he did it on the night that I first went to see it, thus explaining the change in performance by the time I went back to see it again?

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Today's Joanna Page is Very Annie Mary, a little movie set in Wales that features just about every Welsh actor in existence. It stars Rachel Griffiths, an Australian actress who impressed everyone right up until she joined the cast of Brothers and Sisters, as Annie Mary, the frustrated (in every sense) daughter of Pavarotti-impersonating baker Jonathan Pryce. 

She wants to help her best friend, the seriously ill 16-year-old Bethan Bevan, get to Disneyland and singing in a talent contest might be the only way to get the money. And despite being 22 at the time, Joanna Page played that sick teenager.

Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page: Very Annie Mary"

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Ms Rullsenberg has nudged into my consciousness the fact that Safety Catch, a Radio 4 comedy series about a reluctant arms dealer, is currently enjoying a repeat run at a sensible time on said station. Hooray!

It stars Darren Boyd, Joanna Page (yes) and Brigid Forsyth and is really quite funny, if you're into slightly black, apparently un-PC yet not comedy. If you've missed any episodes - which is likely since it started its run on the 8th July - you can catch up using the iPlayer or through my last blog entry on the subject, which links to all four episodes. You can also find out more about the show from the British Comedy Guide, which has been good enough to quote me alongside The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph for some reason on its “press clippings” page about the show.

However, after having the show nudged back into my consciousness, I decided to investigate a bit to see if a second series has finally been commissioned. And lo and behold it has, according to writer Laurence Howarth. The second series should be airing next year some time - no word on if there have been any cast or character changes or when recordings are going to be. I s'pose I could ask, but that sounds a bit like hard work. Maybe later…

In a return to its roots, Today's Joanna Page eschews the excitement of the review and the intellectual delight of the polemic in favour of pure pictures, since it's time for the 2004 touring production of Billy Liar, which I obviously didn't see (even though it began its run at Bromley's Churchill theatre).

I can't even comment on the story, since although I've seen the movie version, it was so long go, all I can remember are about three images from the whole thing. And I haven't seen the TV series. Or read the book.

Oh dear.

Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page: Billy Liar"

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Today's Joanna Page - and also, in a blog crossover first, Lambert Gold - is The Cazalets, a mini-series from 2001 based on 'The Cazalet Chronicles' by Elizabeth Jane Howard.

Now, you may - or may not - have noticed that in many TV programmes there feature a certain group of people called 'women'. More often than not, particularly in period dramas, they're there to serve specific plot functions: to encourage/discourage the hero; to make tea; to bring up the children; and to be decorative and fallen in love with.

However, many noted scholars, intellectuals and TV producers are coming to the conclusion that these secondary characters could have emotions and feelings of their own; they could have their own viewpoints and opinions; they could even, in time, become the heroes - 'heroines' perhaps? - of some stories.

It was one such rebel faction, led by actress Joanna Lumley and producer Verity Lambert, who decided in 1998 to adapt 'The Cazalet Chronicles' as a mini-series. Convinced that a story of the various women and girls in the Cazalet family during the 30s and 40s could be as interesting as any similar tale about men, they scratched together co-funding from the BBC and WGBH.

An at-times grim tale that shows all the miseries that could befall even well-off women back in the 'good old days', the only real problem with the 2001 production is that they never had a chance to finish it.

Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page/Lambert Gold: The Cazalets"

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Today's Joanna Page is Bye Bye Harry, a British road movie released in 2006, of which she was the star, and that you will never have seen. Ever. Until now.

We've been jumping all over the place chronologically, here, so let's recap the inexorable career rise of Ms Joanna Page. After leaving RADA in 1999, she went straight to the National Theatre for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She continued to do well in the theatre, with roles in a series of medieval mystery plays, The Mysteries, As You Like It, What the Butler Saw, Aladdin, Doomsday, Camera Obscura, and Billy Liar (with Ralph Little), among others.

The world of film beckoned, too, with bit parts in Miss Julie and This Year's Love, and larger parts in From Hell, Very Annie Mary, Love Actually, and Gideon's Daughter.

And on tele, there were important roles in David Copperfield, The Cazalets, The Lost World, Ready When You Are Mr McGill, Making Waves, Mine All Mine and To The Ends of the Earth. She even found time to fit in a few radio plays and a music video in all that, too.

So by 2005/6, a starring role in a movie looked inevitable. Indeed, in his review of The Mysteries for The Independent, right at the start of her career, Robert Butler prophetically wrote, "As Eve, Joanna Page looks as if (now she's eaten that apple) she will be the love-interest in a movie very soon."

And then it arrived: No Snow which soon became Bye Bye Harry. She's the female lead – arguably the lead. It's a British road movie, a 'dark' rom-com by experienced comedy writer Graham Alborough . It's got noted director Robert Young at its helm. It's got two of the country's biggest rock stars in supporting roles. And when it was released, it featured at the country's leading film festival. 

So why haven't you heard of it until now? And why had you probably not heard of Joanna Page until Gavin & Stacey?

Problem is, I've been linguistically tricky. See, although I said it was a British road movie – and indeed it is, according to the British Council – I pulled a fast one. The bulk of the financing came from Germany and Slovakia. When I said "the country", the country I actually meant was Germany, the rock stars I mentioned were Bela B Felsenheimer and Til Schweiger (very big in Germany), and the film festival I mentioned was the Berlin film festival. 

And it's never been released anywhere else. Not France, not Belgium, not the Netherlands. It's certainly never been shown in Britain. And although you could get a version dubbed into German on rental in Germany, you couldn't get the original English language version until two weeks ago – on import from Amazon.de. 

So without fear of contradiction, may I present for your delight the very first, most comprehensive, most definitive and probably very last English language review of Bye Bye Harry aka Liebling, wir graben Harry aus.

Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page: Bye Bye Harry"

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