Category: entertainment and leisure news

THE village of Chinnor is currently planning its second Chinnor Passion Play, which will be performed on April 25, 2020, and are recruiting for Roman Soldiers, Temple Guards and Disciples – mainly non speaking parts, walk on-walk off type parts.

The first Chinnor Passion Play was held in 2017, when approx 700 people went to see it. To find out more abour Passion Plays and who to contact to be involved, Contact : 07957813104, email: chinnorpassionplay@gmail.com or visit the website: chinnorpassionplay.com

THAME Choral Society, now in its 60th year, will be celebrating with a performance of Handel’s Messiah later in the Spring.

In preparation, TCS is holding a Handel Messiah ‘Come and Sing’, to which non members are very welcome to attend, at Haddenham Community Infants School, Woodways, Haddenham HP17 8OS. 10am – 4pm – Tickets £15. To register visit: www.thamechoralsociety.org.uk

The concert

Thame Choral Society is Thame’s longest running choir, and will be performing this famous oratorio, composed in 1741, at St Mary’s Church, Thame, on April 18, 2020, in the evening.

TCS last performed the Messiah at the 50th anniversary concert, on that occassion with Director Colin Spinks, and so it is fitting to revive this iconic work, this time with orchestral accompaniment and under the experienced eye of TCS’s current Director, Helen Swift.

Follow Thame Choral Society’s facebook page where ticket details for the concert in April will be available nearer the time. https://www.facebook.com/ThameChoralSociety/

ROTARY Club of Thame & District are appealing to the public to come up with teams to attend the eighth edition of Thame Swimathon, the now traditional fun and fundraising event to be held at Thame Leisure Centre on Sunday, March 1, between 11am and 3pm.

There are about 10 spaces left for teams of between four and six during the 11:00, 12:00 and 14:00 time slot.

Marius Ciortan, Chairman of the Thame Swimathon steering group, said: “Thame Swimathon is a wonderful event for families, school friends, work colleagues to raise funds for charity, swim for one hour and have fun. To enter it’s as easy as 1-2-3: get a team of 4-6 together, download the Team Entry Form from www.thame.rotary1090.org, fill in the form and then email it to thame.swimathon@btintenet.com“

The organisers hope that all swimming slots will be booked before the end of the schools’ half term holidays due to start on the February 14. All participants will receive medals awarded by Ann Midwinter, Mayor of Thame, or by Peter Allen, President of the Rotary Club of Thame & District.

Teams have the option to allocate 50% of their money raised towards the charity of their choice or 100% towards Rotary’s charities. In both cases all monies will be collected by Rotary Club of Thame & District and they will apply for Gift Aid as appropriate. Once this process is completed, Rotary Club of Thame & District will make a donation towards the charity of a team’s choice, should this option be taken.

Rotary Club Thame & District main charities supported during 2019-2020, are Thame Young Carers, Red Kite Family Centre Thame & Chinnor, and The Maple Tree Children’s Centre Wheatley. The event is possible due to generous local sponsors who kindly cover the swimming pool hiring costs, Thame Leisure Centre and Haddenham Beer Festivals Trust. Aston Hearing Thame kindly supported the event with the cost of producing the medals.

Volunteers from Thame Inner Wheel, Wheatley Park Interact Club and Phoenix Community Club will be supporting Thame and District Rotarians with the counting of lengths swum by teams.

Five teams for Barley Hill School will participate in the Swimathon, raising funds for its PTFA – as they have done for the past three years – Thame Swimathon is now one of the main fundraisers for this parents-teachers association.

Rapid Six from John Hampden School, Thame, Wheatley Park Interact Club and Dippers & Divers will participate again this year. A team from the newly created Phoenix Community Club will be welcomed to attend.

All the teams would appreciate any support via online donations. The Virgin Money Giving links will be available on the Thame Swimathon page of the Rotary Club of Thame & District’s website www.thame.rotary1090.org and on Facebook via www.facebook.com/thamerotary

IT’S not hard to see why Lulu Wang’s delightful and heartwarming culture-clash comedy-drama broke audience records on its release in the United States – where attendance figures outstripped the latest Avengers instalment.

Billi is a Chinese American very much at home in Brooklyn, a writer in her early 30s with not much in the way of cash or prospects. She has lived in the US since the age of 6 with her parents, but she has strong ties to her family in China, in particular her beloved grandmother (Nai Nai in her native Mandarin).

When the family discover that nai nai has cancer and is terminally ill, they decide that they must all travel back to say goodbye. The only catch is that according to Chinese custom, it is very bad form to tell an old person that they have cancer, in order to save them fear and distress. So, the family must come up with another reason to justify a huge gathering.

So it is decided that Billi’s cousin and his Japanese girlfriend – who have been half heartedly dating for only a couple of months – will be press ganged into a Big Family Wedding with all the trimmings that will provide the perfect cover for a farewell to Nai Nai. What could possibly go wrong? Billi has to navigate impossible cultural tensions: the tendency of her adopted country to be open about your feelings and talk it all out – a tendency that she has adopted herself – versus her family’s insistence that they must all put on a brave smiley face and hide their anguish, an insistence that Billi perceives as a cruel lie.

Ultimately, what must govern an individual’s actions? Does the imperative of individual emotions and feelings transcend the collective interests of a family and a community?

The story is based on the director’s own experience, a story she shared on New York public radio that she decided to develop into a screenplay. And this closeness to her heart comes across, with warmth and honesty and a great affinity with our heroine, Billi, helped by a standout performance from Awkwafina, who this week took home a Golden Globe for her efforts. The result is a bittersweet and poignant portrait of love and family ties, one of the best indy movies of 2019, that has had audiences laughing out loud and wiping away the odd tear in equal measure. Bring tissues.

The Farewell – Friday, January 17, 8 pm – Thame Players Theatre, Thame –  doors open 7.30pm – Licenced bar – Tickets HERE
USA 2019, 98 minutes, PG certificate –
Directed by Lulu Wang, Starring Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Jim Liu, Shuzhen Zhou, Gil Perez-Abraham – Trailer HERE

YOU don’t get hired here,” states Maloney (Ross Brewster), the hard-nosed delivery- depot boss in Ken Loach’s searing examination of zero-hours Britain, Sorry We Missed You.

“You come on board. We call it on-boarding. You don’t work for us – you work with us.” It’s a prime example of the doublespeak that underwrites today’s gig-economy culture, brilliantly captured by Paul Laverty’s justifiably embittered script. As sold to hard-grafting Ricky Turner (Kris Hitchen), it’s an opportunity to become ‘the master of your own destiny’ – a self-employed franchise-owner, freed from wage slavery (there are only ‘fees’) in a brave new world in which everything ‘is your choice’.

Yet despite Ricky’s determination to grab this opportunity and make it work for him and his family, he’s been sold a lie – all he’s really being freed from are basic workers’ rights. Before the drama is over, that hollow declaration of choice will come back to haunt Ricky, painfully revealed as nothing more than an enslaving illusion.

From the outset we know where this is going, as the costs immediately start piling up. First there’s the van, which requires a £1,000 deposit, raised by selling the car that Ricky’s wife, Abby (Debbie Honeywood), needs for her own work. She’s already overstretched – an agency care-worker in an uncaring world, shuttling endlessly between too-short appointments with the elderly and infirm, struggling to live up to her golden rule: “Treat them like your mam.” Then there are the costs of the job; the hundreds of pounds of fines incurred if Ricky doesn’t show up on time; the thousands he owes if he loses his parcels or his tracker. And then there is the cost to Ricky’s family life, as every hour is swallowed up with work, his teenaged son goes further off the rails, and his able but anxious daughter struggles to cope with the obvious struggles the family are facing.

As always with Loach and Laverty’s work, the devil is in the detail – those incidental elements that lend an unmistakable ring of truth to the wider drama. Whether it’s Ricky being given a bottle to piss in to save time on the road, or Abby dabbing camphor under her nostrils before entering a potentially pungent home, we believe in these characters and the situations in which they find themselves. This is powerfully real and heart-breaking drama from a director that demands we attend to the erosion of the standards we have all come to take for granted, but which are disappearing without us getting sufficiently angry about it. (Based on the review by Mark Kermode published in The Observer, 3.11.19, accessed 5.1.20) View the trailer HERE

Sorry We Missed You – Thame Players Theatre, Nelson Street, Thame – Sunday 12th of January, 7 pm – UK 2019, 101 minutes, 15 certificate
Directed by Ken Loach, Starring Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Stone, Katie Proctor, Mark Birch, Ross Brewster

THAME Cinema 4 All kicks off 2020, on Saturday, January 4, with this sumptuous drama about a family forced under traumatic circumstances to confront its secrets.

Laura (Penélope Cruz) returns to her home village in rural Spain. The occasion is a big family wedding – an occasion that is pregnant with the potential for familial confrontations, the opening of wounds, and tearful recriminations. Laura brings her two children with her, but her husband Alejandro (Darin) has stayed in their new home country of Argentina for work reasons. It is some time since Laura was last here and there are secrets associated with her earlier life that she hopes will remain buried in the past.

But her daughter Irene soon strikes up a connection with a local boy, who tells of Laura’s passionate love for a local man, Paco (Bardem), who was left heartbroken after her departure. Apparently “everybody knows” about this love affair, but it remains unclear just what else there is to tell.

Then Irene disappears in the middle of the wedding party, apparently taken from her room, and whoever has abducted her leaves behind newspaper clippings relating to an earlier kidnapping. Soon, untraceable text messages appear demanding money and threatening the worst should the police become involved.

It is an exacting blow to the family, apparently delivered by someone who knows just what buttons to push. In their efforts to unpick what has happened and who might be behind it, the family implodes under the weight of long held jealousies, suspicions, resentments and betrayals. There is a masterly command of storytelling from Farhadi – whose films from his native Iran (The Salesman, A Separation) share an interest in secrets, lies and retributions – and knockout performances from a mesmerising ensemble cast. Gripping and gorgeous.
View the trailer HERE

EVERYBODY KNOWS
Spain 2018, 130 minutes, 15 certificate
Directed by Asghar Farhadi, Starring Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Ricardo Darín, Eduard Fernández, Bárbara Lennie, Inma Cuesta

Thame Players Theatre, Nelson Street, Thame – Doors open 7.30pm

TWO cracking shows are coming to the Players Theatre in Thame, in February, starting with Viva Neil Diamond – Celebrating 50 years of hits! February 2,  2020 at 7.45pm.

In 1966, Neil Diamond’s first hits smashed into the world’s music charts. To celebrate the icon’s 50 year recording career, the UK’s very own ‘voice of Neil’ Bob Drury (‘The Neil Diamond Story’) takes to the road with ‘Viva Neil Diamond’, a brand new one-man stage show simply bursting with Neil Diamond gems!

Later in the month, on Sunday, February 16, Thame’s very own Celtic Heartbeat will be performaing in the afternoon at 2.30pm.

Local modern folk band, Celtic Heartbeat, take you through their repertoire of traditional and new songs about soldiers, sailors, ploughboys, love, broken hearts, disaster and joy.

Blending music, harmony, images and film the band will transport you back to a time of exploration, immigration, shipwrecks, hardship and the celebration of life.

LINK HERE to book all Thame Players Theatre shows!

JACK is a stuggling musician trying to make a go of things in Lowestoft, from one mediocre pub gig to another, with appearances at the odd festival playing to audiences of two or three.

He has decided on more than one occasion to pack it in and get real, but his ‘manager’ and best friend Ellie – who would like to be more to Jack than that – keeps the faith and encourages him not to give up on his dreams. One evening, he is cycling home when a freak global blackout happens, thrusting him and his bike into an oncoming bus. He survives, and wakes up intact but for a couple of teeth.

But the world he wakes up into has shifted slightly on its axis: when he picks up his guitar in the pub beer garden one afternoon and absent-mindedly picks out Yesterday on his acoustic guitar, his friends pretend they have never heard it. Never heard of Lennon or Macartney, never heard of The Beatles. He goes home and tries to find it on Google. Images of shiny black beetles appear. And when he tries out a few Beatles numbers at his gigs he soon finds himself an overnight sensation, hailed as a breakthough songwriter, a once in a generation musical genius.

Global domination beckons: fame beyond his imaginings, wealth, women, accolades. But is it OK, he keeps asking himself? He is basically a liar and a plagiarist. Surely he will meet some sort of grizzly come-uppance.

Danny Boyle’s gorgeous feelgood rom com might be based on a screenplay by the master of that genre, Richard Curtis. But it is a bit more rough round the edges, a bit more gritty and complex than you might expect thanks to the dubious morality of our hero Jack, who we root for even though we know he is faking it. And the film manages to pull off a small miracle: it persuades you that you are hearing those songs for the first time, and to marvel at what really was a miraculous musical output, song after song after song.

With a cracking cast, including a satisfyingly self-deprecating cameo from Ed Sheeran, this will put a big sunny smile on your face. View the trailer here.

Film: Yesterday – Saturday. December 28, 8 pm (Doors open 7.30pm) – Thame Players Theatre, Nelson Street, Thame. Licenced bar

INFO: UK 2019, 113 minutes, 12 certificate – Directed by Danny Boyle, Starring Himesh Patel, Lily James, Joel Fry, Kate McKinnon, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal, Ed Sheeran

** UPDATE; Thame Cinema 4 All is putting on an extra, earlier screening of Rocketman as the evening show is now pretty well booked. Doors open 3.30, film begins 4pm **

FROM the opening sequence, in which Taron Egerton’s Elton John strides into rehab in full stage regalia – demonic horns, wings, orange lycra catsuit, platforms, the works – and declares himself addicted to pretty much everything on the list, you will be hooked.

Dexter Fletcher’s sensational rock opera tells the story of how Reggie Dwight became Elton John and how Elton John almost came a cropper as he succumbed to sensational success, stratospheric fame, endless temptations and the consequences of excess. Told as a series of key episodes from John’s life, we learn about Reggie’s suburban childhood, his troubled relationships with his mother and his estranged father, his gift for songwriting, his creative partnership with Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell), and in particular his love affairs and his substance abuse, with the inevitable loneliness, isolation and near death experiences that ensue. Taron Egerton is breathtakingly good, with support from a sterling cast.

Scored and choreographed with numbers from Elton’s glorious musical catalogue, his songs become narrative devices that perfectly frame the story of his incredible life – it’s as if he wrote them for this very purpose. A riotous, dazzling and moving portrait of a rare talent, a deeply troubled but ultimately transcendent pop star.

A veritable Christmas Cracker. View the trailer HERE

UK 2019, 121 minutes, 15 certificate
Directed by Dexter Fletcher, Starring Taron Egerton, Richard Madden, Jamie Bell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Tate Donovan, Stephen Graham
Sunday 22nd of December, Thame Players Theatre, Nelson Street, Thame – Doors open 6.30pm for 7 pm start.

Audience participation – Spectacular eye wear – or other period wear – is optional but encouraged !!