REVIEWS
Word Up! Birmingham
March 2013
“You marvellous woman! What a fantastically fun performance you gave us all last night at Word Up.! You offered about as much variety in your own set as we experienced with all the rest of the acts for the night! :-)”
Gavin William James Young
Bilston Voices, Cafe Metro
February 2013
“Brilliant, as ever.”
Emma Purshouse
Purple Penumbra, Barlow Theatre, Oldbury
February 2013
“Whenever she performs, Heather Wastie is the highlight of the evening. Heather can always be relied upon to surprise and charm any audience with her impish wit and musical talent. We were all enthralled.”
Al Barz
42 Worcester, Drummonds Bar
January 2013
“Heather Wastie revealed her darker side with a brilliant performance to close the night. This talented lady enthralled us with her captivating poetry during her debut to "42". We hope to see her again in the near future.”
Andrew Owens http://42worcester.wordpress.com
Mouth and Music, Kidderminster
August 2012
“Heather, those songs were marvellous in their historical context and your voice is worth listening to ...”
Polly Robinson
Bilston Love Slam
February 2012
“Local star Heather Wastie performed an intelligent, sharp and wistful piece”
Gary Longden www.behindthearras.com
Black Country Dialectics, Bilston Library, with Dave Reeves & Chris Lomas
November 2011
“Heather Wastie, who seems to have an endless supply of characters, gave us the women’s voices in her usual quietly impeccable style. This woman must surely be heir to the traditions of Joyce Grenfell? “
Eileen Ward-Birch www.behindthearras.com
Variety Night, Imperial Banqueting Suite, Bilston
September 2011
“Heather Wastie is an artistic polymath well known on the Midlands circuit, tonight she performed as Montserrat Carbonarra, an opera singer whose orchestra was sadly otherwise engaged. But she was not going to let that put her off.
A beguiling mix of comedy, light verse and. . . . . . . . . . . . . operatic singing, she entertained and amused as the opening act, the highlight of which was when she had to improvise as an oboe too, as the oboe player also was unable to be present. The only disappointment being that the audience was ready for more when she finished – but that’s opera singers for you!”
Gary Longden www.behindthearras.com
Bilston Voices
July 2011
“Inviting Heather Wastie to close an evening in the Black Country is as safe a bet as Wolves inviting Steve Bull as a guest at Molineux, you can’t go wrong. And so it proved. Heather is as prolific a writer as ever, and whilst drawing upon her latest book “The Page Turners Dilemma” she also performed much fresh material.
She was afraid of the fish man with, “I’m Afraid of the Fish Man” and the butcher’s with “At Knifepoint in the Butchers”.
Sparsely filled shop units and dodgy PA systems at festivals all bore testament to the travails of the wandering minstrel poet, but it was her established “Ping pong Neo-natal ICU” which stood out once again as her best work. Wry, but serious, with clever use of sound, it delights with its clever word play whilst conveying the life and death nature of the surroundings.”
Gary Longden www.behindthearras.com
Poetry Bites, Birmingham
May 2011
“Headlining was Midlands troubadour Heather Wastie. One of the pleasures of commentating on the Midlands poetry scene is watching performers evolve as time goes on, and Heather is not one to rest upon her laurels. Heather has just been shortlisted as a prospective “Bard of Worcestershire”.
Performing a split set at the end of each half suited her as she combined poetry with music, played on keyboard. Host Jacqui Rowe introduced Heather by revealing that Heather had taught her daughter to play the recorder – although she wasn’t produced to accompany Heather as she played!
Her material combined new work with established material from her two collections “Until I Saw Your Foot” and “The Page Turner’s Dilemma”. A professionally qualified and accomplished musician, comedienne and poet, she effortlessly slipped between disciplines to offer a show, rather than simply a reading.
“The Music Stand”, about her trusty ancient apparatus was poignant and wry, “Ping Pong Neo Natal ICU” her most daring and successful piece. Yet despite the cleverness and humour which run like rich seams through her writing her authenticity is perhaps her most endearing quality. “Love in the Garden” is light, fey, but heart-felt. No-one who heard it cannot help but have thought to themselves “that IS what love is about” and not had a warm feeling. Which is exactly what listening to a Heather Wastie performance invariably does. “
Gary Longden - Behind the arras
Smoke & Mirrors, Malvern
April 2011
“.... the quality of the opening act of the second half, an on-song Heather Wastie, assured that the evening carried on from where it had left off. An impressively versatile and extremely engaging comic performer, her set included some grammar-related poetry which almost made one feel sorry for the benighted apostrophe, a macabre piece about “The Case of Sir Bernard Spilsbury”, an affecting song about the trials of a young jazz chanteuse on the make and the newly completed and eminently tuneful “Rooftop Dancing”, capped by the impossibly oxymoronic, “Whatever You Do, Don’t”. “
Fergus McGonigal - Behind the arras
SNUG - Hollybush Public House, Cradley Heath
February 2011
“This was a site specific live performance which combined theatre with poetry for a production which used the Hollybush pub in its entirety as its stage for the first of two sold out nights. The brainchild of Emma Purshouse and Heather Wastie, “Snug” is a celebration of the pub – in a pub!
Trudy King acts as Narrator and leads us in to proceedings by introducing an evening where the traditions of the pub are looked back upon, with the audience as time travellers, dipping into the past. The cannon of pub characters are wonderfully brought alive. Heather Wastie wanders in to wryly reflect on, “We had a bust up” and “You’ re sitting in my seat”, the latter the perennial cry of the disgruntled regular, to ease us into people and situations which many of us are familiar with.
This is a performance of many moods. Brendan Hawthorne delivers a tour de force spot with the “Retirement Speech of a Black Country Ventriloquist”, filled with pathos and introspection, before Emma Purshouse rips through “Concheata”, a hilarious spoof on a fruit machine which comes to life. The site specific pieces work particularly well, “Pool Life” around the pool table, “Nubs” around the discarded fag ends in the smoking area and memorably “Bogs” by the bogs, performed by landlord Dave Francis.
The writing is very strong, as is the acting, with Heather Wastie an astonishingly convincing drunk binge drinking Mayor (you had to be there), and Brendan Hawthorne oozing regret and vino veritas through the bottom of a glass. “Old boy regular” Geoff Cox is never far away doing the crossword either.
Bold, inventive and fresh, this production has enormous potential to evolve and grow. It was warmly received by an audience who revelled in being part of the show, and where having a pint was entering into the spirit of the evening. The divide between narration, live action, poetry, prose and dialogue is marvellously blurred resulting in a fusion of styles which constantly holds everyone’s attention as the performance dynamic shifts, twists and turns. A little gem of a show.”
Gary Longden - Behind the arras
RHYMES JAN-SLAM
January 2011
“The multi-talented Heather Wastie knows how to work a good idea. Following the success of “Halloween Nightmare” she offered the sequel, “Christmas Nightmare” in which the carol singers were definitely not harbingers of peace and goodwill.”
Kay Dents - Behind the arras
PUREandGOODandRIGHT, The Sozzled Sausage, Leamington
November 2010
'I thought Heather was entertaining. Nice mix of amusing and semi-serious poems and songs.'
'Heather was fantastic!'
Montserrat Carbonara at PILOT Light, Birmingham / Bilston Voices
July 2010
“Good, solid, polished comedy.”
“Very funny, extremely well performed.”
“Brilliant.”
“Awesome.”
“I loved this performance.”
“A superb concept.”
“It’s really refreshing to see something different. You’ve certainly cracked it with Montserrat Carbonara; she was spectacular!”
Rhymes - Mixing Bowl Theatre, The Custard Factory, Digbeth
February 2010
“... a clever, sophisticated, and humorous performance by the multi-talented Heather Wastie and her alter-ego “Lily Bolero”. Her wry observations on Concert Hall etiquette were very well received, as was her closing song.”
Kay Dents - Behind the arras
Comments from audience:
“Just to say how much I enjoyed your performance last night. You can write, you can act and you can sing. What talent! Well done."
John Goss
“Excellent - glad to have heard you.”
“ ... you were amazing. Your poetry and performance were second to none.”
Bilston Voices - Cafe Metro
January 2010
And so to Heather Wastie - or possibly Lily Bolero, the performance was, by her own admission, rather schizophrenic. Her poems were not just well written and extremely funny but brilliantly performed. ..... she didn't read, she recited, freeing her to perform. As she went through the set she took on a whole range of different characters and voices to great effect. I especially liked the one where she "interviewed" the members of the audience at a classical concert, becoming character after character each one with their own peculiar and annoying, concert-going habits and each one critical of other members of the audience. .... she finished with a song, complete with a taped backing, an instrumental break and a dance routine. It was hilarious.
from The Hitting the Road Again Blues by travel writer, Bob Hale
