Latest news with #SisterRosettaTharpe
BBC News
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Woman's Hour Beverley Knight, ADHD and menopause, Barrister Robin Moira White
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was known as the 'godmother of rock and roll' and influenced countless musicians from Elvis to Johnny Cash. Now Olivier Award-winning performer Beverley Knight is playing Sister Rosetta in a new production, Marie and Rosetta, which has just opened at the Rose Theatre in London. It tells the story of Rosetta and her singing partner, Marie Knight, described as one of the most remarkable and revolutionary duos in music history. Beverley joins Nuala McGovern in the Woman's Hour studio to discuss how the show hopes to restore these forgotten musical heroines to the spotlight. A new programme, Inside our ADHD Minds, is exploring the link between ADHD and the menopause. It's thought that around 3 to 4% of people in the UK, that's 1 in 20, have ADHD - Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. However many women still remain undiagnosed for decades of their lives, with those in their 40s, 50s and 60s only now discovering they have it for the first time. Jo Beazley was diagnosed with ADHD just two years ago at the age of 49, after her symptoms worsened during the menopause. She joins Nuala along with Amanda Kirby, the former chair of the ADHD Foundation and a professor in the field of neurodiversity. This week we'll be hearing different perspectives on the recent Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman under the Equality Act, and how it could and should be interpreted on the ground. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has issued interim guidance that, in places open to the public, trans women shouldn't use women's facilities such as toilets. Today Nuala speaks to Robin Moira White, a barrister who specialises in taking discrimination cases, and who is also a trans woman. Robin transitioned in 2011 and is co-author of A Practical Guide to Transgender Law. Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Sarah Jane Griffiths
Times
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Marie and Rosetta review — a tribute to the godmother of rock'n'roll
If talent alone were all that mattered, everyone would be familiar with the name of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the raucous gospel singer and guitarist who laid the groundwork for rock'n'roll long before anyone thought of putting Elvis Presley in a recording studio. George Brant's play, first staged by the Atlantic Theater Company in New York in 2016 and now receiving its UK premiere at the Rose Theatre in London, creaks in places, but Monique Touko's production — a collaboration with Chichester Festival Theatre and English Touring Theatre — is lifted by incandescent vocals from the R'n'B singer Beverley Knight. As in that curious bio-musical The Drifters Girl — which asked us to admire a manager who was quite the martinet — Knight again portrays a
The Guardian
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Marie and Rosetta review – Beverley Knight's mighty vocal soars as the godmother of rock'n'roll
With her coffee table-size electric guitar and a voice capable of belting out gospel melodies over reverberating distortion, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, AKA the godmother of rock'n'roll, carries a formidable legacy. One of the first gospel singers to find mainstream success in the 1930s, as well as an early musical influence for rockers such as Little Richard and Elvis, Tharpe was a trailblazing celebrity who has since faded in the public consciousness. Set over a single night in 1946, George Brant's two-hander finds Tharpe at a crossroads. Massively popular but facing increasing competition from singer Mahalia Jackson and controversy for taking faith-based music into nightclubs, 31-year-old Tharpe is rethinking her status. Enter the quivering, starstruck young singer Marie Knight, who Tharpe has plucked from obscurity and decided to take on tour with her across the segregated Southern US. Over the course of a rehearsal, Tharpe must persuade Knight to come on the road and revitalise her career in the process. West End musical stalwart Beverley Knight plays Tharpe with aplomb, casting her as a fun-loving elder facing racist America and conservative Christians with an unshakeable sense of song. Stage newcomer Ntombizodwa Ndlovu, meanwhile, is endearing as Marie, fawning over her hero while reassessing her morals. The music is immediate and brilliant, with Knight and Ndlovu reaching a soaring harmony on the swaggering Rock Me, rumbling into a sultry groove on Tharpe's nightclub favourite I Want a Tall Skinny Papa and highlighting Knight's mighty solo vocal on Didn't It Rain. With guitarist Shirley Tetteh and pianist Liam Godwin channelling Tharpe's bluesy feel, decades-old songs are reinvigorated. The script, however, is a disappointment. Overly didactic, with swathes of dialogue telling the audience about Tharpe's life story or the realities of racism but showing little, Brant misses an opportunity to meaningfully examine the difficulties of being a boundary-breaking woman of colour in the 1940s. What might it mean to believe in God when your civil rights are taken away? What motivated Tharpe to tirelessly pursue larger audiences and threaten her church-going audience? The answers won't be found in Marie and Rosetta. Yet, in Knight and Ndlovu's voices we can at least find engaging emotion, bringing Tharpe's powerful music to life once more. At Rose Theatre, Kingston, London, until 24 May. Then at Wolverhampton Grand, 27–31 May and Chichester Festival Theatre 25 June to 26 July
