Don Warrington, best known as Philip in Rising Damp, thought he’d never return to the theatre. Then he read the script for Elmina’s Kitchen, writes Richard Hodkinson

THOSE who know Don Warrington best may be surprised to find him nightly treading the boards of the Garrick Theatre in Kwame Kwei-Armah’s highly praised Elmina’s Kitchen.
“Before I read this particular script,” he explains, “I hadn’t done any theatre for nine years, and never thought I would again, curiously. I thought I’ d had enough of it, because the theatre is so exposing. You’re up there at eight, you don’t come off until ten and when the process starts there’s nowhere to hide – you can’t stop and start again if it all goes wrong. After so much TV and so many films I didn’t feel I wanted to be that exposed again.”
The play, which tells the story of a black family’s struggle against crime and the breakdown of the social order on Hackney’s notorious Lower Clapton Road, is the first non-musical British production that focuses on black issues to play on a major West End Stage.

Think of a late 20th-century icon and Chuck Rapoport has probably photographed them. But his most popular is that of Joe Pilates, writes Mark Blunden

ICONS such as Marilyn Monroe, Samuel Beckett, Fidel Castro and JFK provided some of the most evocative photographs of the twentieth century.
In the 1960s, major magazines, including Life, Time and National Geographic all secured the services of a man they knew could produce such unique images.
Chuck Rapoport has been behind the lens shooting more legends than most people could dream up.
Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Gabor, Tina Onassis and the Crown Prince and Princess of Japan were all among the Bronx-born Mr Rapoport’s early subjects. Cuban leader Fidel Castro even agreed to a one-to-one session in a New York hotel room, while Mr Rapoport’s Paris Match cover photo of Jackie Kennedy at JFK’s funeral brought him worldwide fame.