LINKS

Tony Bullimore Rescued! News Report, 9th July, 1997
BBC News Website
Looking Back - interview and pictures
BBC Radio 5

POSTER

IMG

Roxanna Panufnik - The Upside Down Sailor


Words by Richard Stilgoe
  • Performers : 9 musicians, narrator, Conductor
  • Themes : Nautical, drama, family, rescue, sea
  • Running Time : 60 mins
  • Age suitability 8+
  • Pre-Concert talk available Yes

The true story of British sailor Tony Bullimore's dramatic shipwreck and rescue comes vividly to life in Panufnik's work for narrator, tape and wind ensemble.

The highly dramatic text written by Richard Stilgoe is performed live by Auricle's regular collaborators Crawford Logan and Joanna Tope. It begins with Bullimore's boat, the Exide Challenger, glidling peacefully through the Southern Ocean, until things go very wrong. WIth the keel broken Bullimore has to survive for five days in the upturned boat before being rescued - some 1600 miles from the Australian coast, and in 99mph winds

For family festivals and events, there are even optional parts that can be played by amateur and young musicians in the audience. "It's a great concert piece" said Auricle's Artistic Director Chris Swaffer, "with Panufnik's descriptive and evocative writing for wind married to Stilgoe's witty and dramatic text"

The Upside Down Sailor is presented alongside Malcolm Arnold's 'Three Shanties' for wind and Fauré's beautiful Nocturne in Eb. For family concerts, it can also be paired with other narrated works from our repertoire - including Roald Dahl's Dirty Beasts by Martin Butler, Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals, or Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.

PROGRAMME

Malcolm Arnold - Three Shanties for Wind
Gabriel Fauré - Nocturne in Eb, Op 33/1
Roxanna Panufnik - The Upside Down Sailor




Joanna Tope studied for a degree in Drama at Manchester University and spent the following ten years in the Repertory movement in Britain which included creating roles in plays by Alan Ayckbourn, Edward Bond and Henry Livings . She enjoyed a stint on Emmerdale Farm amongst her TV and radio credits at that time. She married and came to live in Scotland and has since appeared frequently at the Citizens' , where she created roles for Robert David Macdonald and Clare Venables, the Royal Lyceum and the Traverse . She premiered the one-woman 'Promises Promises' by Douglas Maxwell in which , as 'The Promise', she was nominated for a New York Drama Desk Award. Maxwell's two- hander 'A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity' also played at E59 Theater in New York as well as the Traverse . Other companies she has worked for include Random Accomplice , Stellar Quines, Lung Ha and The Auricle Ensemble. Recent experiences have been appearing in 'Still Game Live Show 2' at the Glasgow Hydro and Gary McNair's 'Locker Room Talk' at Latitude Festival and the Edinburgh Festival and a Scottish tour of 'Horizontal Collaboration' with Fire Exit. Radio work is prolific and she has recorded plays, Books at Bedtime , Books of the Week, Short Stories and several Audio Books ..

Crawford Logan recently completed a very successful Edinburgh Fringe in Cumbernauld Theatre's 'The Gardener', even picking up a 5* review with picture in The Times, and has been fortunate over many years to have appeared in theatres all over the UK and abroad, including the West End. Crawford has been a familiar voice on radio, in particular as the suave author/detective Paul Temple in the Paul Temple Mysteries on BBC Radio 4. He appeared 319 times in ‘The Woman In Black’ at the Fortune Theatre in London’s Covent Garden, seeing in both the 25th year of this famous play and it’s 10,000th performance. Crawford recently performed 'The Lighthouse Keepers' with Red Note Ensemble and earlier this year 'Beethoven's Letters' with the Carducci Quartet. He has a long association with the Tallis Chamber Choir in London and with the compositions of Sally Beamish, and among others has appeared with the Rose Consort of Viols, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Fidelio Trio, Trio Isimsiz and the Rosenethe Singers. He is also a very occasional member of a band called The Martians!. He has been a familiar voice on BBC radio for many years, as well as recording dozens of audiobooks and hundreds of voiceovers for radio and television. And at the same time he has been very fortunate to have had a real theatrical life all over the country, from Wick to Southampton.