Thanks munchkin :dance:

 

 

 

Lovely pic :wub:

For some reason I'm strangely attracted to his hairy arms. :blush:

 

:P Me too TT - long and silky :wub:

 

Some of the text is missing but Bumbling on D has scanned the newspaper:

 

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i142/nodgersboots/IndependentVortex.jpg

Edited January 2, 200718 yr by munchkin

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

 

Who Is The Biggest "Idol" Star?

 

For a long time, the answer was clearly Kelly Clarkson, the only "Idol" winner to become a hit worldwide. Then Carrie Underwood released a smash-hit debut that places her alongside Clarkson, Jennifer Hudson made an Oscar worthy film debut and suddenly we've got ourselves a race. But let's not forget Will Young. The FIRST winner of "Pop Idol," Young hasn't broken out in the US, but he was the first to prove an "Idol" winner could have a real career. He's delivered three hit albums, appeared in the modest hit film "Mrs. Henderson Presents" and came out without any fuss. Now he's making his stage debut in the noel Coward play " The vortex" Clearly, he's in it for the long haul.

 

 

 

by Michael in New York

 

Michael Giltz is an award-winning freelance writer based in New York City who covers all areas of pop culture for The Advocate, New York Post and other publications.

Edited January 2, 200718 yr by BanYellowm+m's

Thankyou hun!...what a wonder you are :cheer: loving these articals your finding us...

New york for godsake! :cheer: :cheer:

Will seems to be gaining a lot of respect from this theatre debut. He's a wise one. It's so difficult to sustain a long pop career but Will is laying down firm foundations for longevity in show business.

 

Thanks for another brilliant find BYM&M's.

Edited January 2, 200718 yr by truly talented

Brilliant BYM&M's, you keep on finding us all these little gems all over the place. :D

:P Me too TT - long and silky :wub:

 

Some of the text is missing but Bumbling on D has scanned the newspaper:

 

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i142/nodgersboots/IndependentVortex.jpg

 

 

Thanks for that Munchkin. I'll pop over and see it, as I wasn't able to get the Independent to-day.

Edited January 2, 200718 yr by chrysalis

You're a wonder BYm+m's.

Thanks to Badgirljo on Devoted: :dance:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v281/badgirljo/telegraph030106.jpg

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml...7/01/03/btwill0 3.xml

 

Quote:

The night I fell in love with the theatre

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 03/01/2007Page 1 of 3

 

 

'Pop Idol' winner Will Young reveals why he has swapped dreams of world domination for a non-singing stage role, writes Dominic Cavendish

 

Scores of celebrities took part in the gloriously silly Morecambe and Wise homage The Play What I Wrote, but only one can claim to have experienced a minor epiphany on stage as they cavorted in the company of Hamish McColl and Sean Foley during their West End run.

 

 

'I've always jumped in at the deep end' - Will Young is now playing a drug-addicted musician in The Vortex by Noel Coward

Pop star Will Young had such a ball on the night in 2002 when he made his cameo appearance – variously dolling up in extravagant drag, putting his head under a guillotine and imitating Eric and Ernie's trademark skipping exit – that he made a mental note to himself.

 

As he recalls thinking at the time: "$h!t! I forgot about theatre! This is fun. I must do more acting."

 

Given that he had spent the previous 10 months enjoying the fruits of his hard-won victory on the ITV talent show Pop Idol – a record deal, the fastest-selling debut single in chart history, widespread adoration – he'd have been forgiven for letting quite a few things slip his mind.

 

And, since then, he's been busy proving his credentials as a sweet-voiced singer-songwriter, notching up an impressive number of hits and consolidating his success in a world notorious for its fickle tastes.

 

It's only now, three albums and seven tours after he first stepped into the limelight, that he's decided the hour has come to act on that impulse and tread the boards good and proper.

 

The choice for his theatrical debut is no toe-dipped-in-the-water affair. The 27-year-old star has elected to plunge headlong into The Vortex, the play that made Noël Coward's name at the age of 24.

 

The part that excited his attention, that of the disintegrating, drug-addicted musician Nicky Lancaster, calls for as much insouciant levity and as much dark, hysteric emotion as Coward ever poured into one character.

 

With little more than six weeks to turn himself into a brooding matinee idol, compared with the six-month marathon of auditions and heats that gave him his Pop Idol status, Young has got his work cut out for him.

 

It helps hugely, he says, that his bid to show the public another side to him, and the first major event of the 2007 theatrical calendar, is taking place in Manchester.

 

"If this was happening in London, I wouldn't be able to concentrate on it at all,' he explains, backstage at the Royal Exchange, where he's lolling on a leather settee.

 

He's being treated, much as one would expect from a regional theatre that has hit the jackpot, like visiting royalty. In front of him, a bowl of grapes and a pile of pastries; in rooms beyond, PR agents on stand-by to ensure he's happy.

 

His look when we meet is pure Coward – by chance, he's in immaculate evening attire following a publicity shoot – and his conversational manner proves matchingly refined: articulate and thoughtful with a pleasant sheen of camp good humour.

 

Yet there's nothing effete about him. He appears, as Coward himself was once described, "unspoiled by his great success".

 

When the Royal Exchange suggested the part, following his show-stealing walk-on as Bertie, the Windmill Theatre's gay MC in the Judi Dench arthouse flick Mrs Henderson Presents last year, he read the play and thought: "Yes! You just get a feeling, don't you? I've always jumped in at the deep end. If I knew exactly what I was getting into, I don't think I'd ever do anything. But I did think 'I can do this.'

 

"I've always worked on the ethic that, if you're going to do something, then you've got to do it seriously. There's no singing in this – I want to go out of my comfort zone. It's probably quite a brave thing to do but you have to try these things."

 

Young has acquired a reputation for being shrewdly strategic, and rather unrock-and-roll, about his career, but there's no grand game plan here, he insists.

 

The last time he performed in Manchester, last October, he was playing to an arena packed with 15,000 people. The Royal Exchange can fit in about 750.

 

His aspirations are modest. "We'll see what comes of it. I want to do the best that I can, and hopefully people will conclude that I can act. It's not about shifting units."

 

He's reached a rare moment of contentment, relieved that he managed to follow up his hugely successful second album, Friday's Child.

 

"For a while after the second album, I wanted global dominance, superstar status. After the last album [Keep On], I feel as if I've got a different perspective. I've done well enough to ensure I can still make another album, but I've taken a view that there are lots of other things I can do, too, that are really fulfilling as a performer."

 

Though always keen on drama, his early acting – at boarding school (Wellington), Exeter University, where he studied politics, and finally Arts Educational drama school in London, a course abandoned because of Pop Idol – was "pretty dreadful", he concedes cheerily.

 

His fame and the challenges that came with it have, he thinks, made him better equipped to tackle so theatrically complex a creature as Nicky Lancaster.

 

Pop Idol meant he had to contend both with the business of performing and the art of being true to himself – having already come out as gay to friends and family at university, his phenomenal success forced him to admit his sexuality once again, this time to the tabloids.

 

Currently in a relationship, he's happy enough in his skin to make overt what is implied in The Vortex: that Nicky, engaged to be wed, is experiencing a crisis of closet homosexuality, triggered by his return to the family nest and his overbearing mother.

 

"Maybe it's because I don't do drugs, but I really didn't read the play as being about a guy who takes cocaine," he says.

 

"There's an undercurrent of sexual confusion, and Nicky's engagement is an attempt to go: 'I'm fine.' I love the fact that it gets to boiling point, because it does get to boiling point with people, and, when I've had that in my life, it's been like living in a drama."

 

Is enacting this moment of crisis on stage going to be painful?

 

"Yes, I think so. A lot of the things I've faced personally I can see in the play. In a major way there are things I relate to – seeing where your mind can go, how you can get to that state. I can embrace being middle-class because I understand the negatives that come with it, the repression, the inhibition.

 

"I still get to stages where I find it tough to function and thankfully I haven't turned to drugs – I can communicate what I'm feeling. But I can see why he's there. Nicky and I are quite similar."

 

So far, Manchester has shown itself to be mad about the boy: "I've really noticed how nice they're being. I haven't had one nasty moment. People still say, 'I voted for you!'." He's sampling the music scene, braving the streets, trying to be as down-to-earth as possible in between rehearsals and learning to play the piano for the part.

 

It must be odd to think that he's going to find himself stepping out in front of his adoring public in character, not as Will Young. Does he worry that people won't be able to suspend disbelief, that they'll be too busy gawping to concentrate?

 

"That's always the issue when you've got a personality on stage. There's that awful whooping thing American tourists do when a star comes on stage, isn't there? My view is that it's a play, not a concert. I love the idea that people will come and see this who wouldn't normally go to a play but, as for how they respond, I'm not going to think about it. It's up to them."

 

Five years after Pop Idol, Will Young is still graciously leaving it to the punters to have the last word.

 

'The Vortex' opens at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (0161 615 6815), on Jan 22

 

A great read - hope it doesn't open on the 22nd though :P I think the 'dark' side of the play would have been one of the temptations to do the play. Really looking forward to this.

Edited January 3, 200718 yr by suggy

Thanks munchkin, wow! these articles are just getting better, a fantastic read and revealing a lot of what Will is thinking. He's such a wonderfully unique, articulate and intelligent man. :wub:

Thanks munchkin, wow! these articles are just getting better, a fantastic read and revealing a lot of what Will is thinking. He's such a wonderfully unique, articulate and intelligent man. :wub:

 

 

Sorry Suggy - just pipped you at the post. I didn't know if anyone was about at this hour - I really must go to bed now. See you tomorrow.

Thanks for bringing it over :dance:

 

What a brilliant article Here is the pic they used [thanks to bumbling on D]

 

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i142/nodgersboots/telegraphRE.jpg

Great in depth interview.

 

Will wins them all around in the end with his unique talents. :cry:

 

Thanks munchkin & BYM&M's

Thanks for posting the DT interview. In a moment, I'm going to try and drive into town on my first "long distance" drive. and hopefully WHS won't have sold out! :lol:

 

And in the meantime the postie's just been and left a copy of The Stage. :cheer: Can't believe how quick they've been - I only ordered it by last Saturday's post!! :D

Thanks for the picture BYM&Ms - love him in a whistle n flute - so stylish :wub:

Edited January 3, 200718 yr by munchkin

Got to-day's DT. :yahoo: And I managed to drive to town - a real landmark. :dance:

Pop idol ready for theatrical debut Jan 3 2007

 

 

SINGER Will Young is set to hit the stage in Noel Coward's play The Vortex next month and if you want to see him in action you had better hurry.

 

Tickets have been selling like hot cakes for weeks and the advice to anyone in search of a good seat is to book now.

 

Young plays troubled musician Nicky Lancaster, a part originally played by Coward himself, who returns from Paris at the height of the post-war party in England.

 

The Vortex created a notorious sensation when premiered in 1924 with its brave depiction of the darkness behind the dazzle of the 'bright young things' who danced and partied their days away.

 

The excellent cast also includes Diana Hardcastle who has previously worked at the Royal Exchange in A Woman Of No Importance and TheDuchess of Malfi. Jo Combes is the director and the design is by Lez Broth-erston

 

 

Manchester evening news

 

Pop Idol winner Will Young, who since scooping the crown has gone on to give Robbie Williams a run for his money in the matinee heartthrob stakes, will play Nicky in the Royal Exchange’s adaptation of Noel Coward’s The Vortex

 

Another posted by Katy on D :dance:

 

He is everywhere at the moment :yahoo:

 

I'll add one from this morning's Guardian here as well ... from the Arts section in G2 headed

 

Fifty Ways To Warm Up Your Winter ... our critics pick of the must see events of the new year

 

Theatre: The Vortex

 

Will Young sets out to prove that there is life after being a pop idol as he takes the role of Nicky, the drug addicted son of ageing socialite Florence in a rare revival of Noel Coward's play. This 1924 depiction of Bright Young Things dancing their way towards destruction shocked in it's day, and may still.

 

Thanks BYM&Ms - I forgot we haven't updated yet. I noticed they mention another cast member :D I was thinking that they hadn't got a look in..... but I doubt the play would have got a mention at all if Will hadn't been involved :P

 

This 1924 depiction of Bright Young Things dancing their way towards destruction shocked in it's day, and may still

 

I like it that they are anticipating what is to come :dance:

 

All our little people are bald again - shame - I loved their hats. :(

 

 

Well done Chrysalis

Edited January 4, 200718 yr by munchkin

Thanks BYM&Ms - I forgot we haven't updated yet. I noticed they mention another cast member :D I was thinking that they hadn't got a look in..... but I doubt the play would have got a mention at all if Will hadn't been involved :P

 

 

True I had not thought of that :P